


nobody knew me at home anymore

by enjambament



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Childhood Friends, High School, M/M, au but not really, best friends since they were little, slow build like woah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 09:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjambament/pseuds/enjambament
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about best friends in a small town is that you don’t get to choose. Instead, you get exactly the person you need. It goes that way with Arthur and Eames. Maybe it’s because both of them aren’t made for small town life, not at all, and so instead of growing to fit the town, they grow to fit together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nobody knew me at home anymore

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys, it's part two of reposting all my fic. without further ado, the original notes:
> 
> So, I have this weird obsession with wanting characters in a pairing to know each other BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE. I like the deep connections. It was only inevitable that this would eventually happen. Thus I give you, that fic where E + A have known each other a LONG TIME, or that high school AU that turns out not actually to be a high school AU.
> 
> Writing this fic was kind of like pulling teeth. I think maybe I was overthinking. I dunno. Remind me not to write high school kids again. Anyway, thanks to my beta synaereses who was willing to overthink along with me.

The Eames family moves in next door in early August. Arthur is sitting on his front steps reading when the moving truck pulls up. It’s unbearably hot inside (the air conditioning is broken again), but there’s a bit of a breeze in the front yard, carried along when the truck drives past.

The truck is massive, and Arthur’s pretty sure that the little house next door won’t be able to fit everything it holds – but he’s only eleven, and he’s lived in the same house all his life, so he has no previous experience with the subject. The drivers are in uniforms with the moving company logo. One suggests that they come back later to pick up the truck and they amble off down the street.

At two o’clock, Arthur goes inside to get a glass of water and when he comes back out he realises he’s just missed the arrival of the new owners. Their car is now parked in the driveway. It’s a very nice car. Arthur can tell because of the way Mr Gregory, the mailman, whistles at it as he passes by, low and sweet like he’s calling it towards him.

Arthur’s dad gets home at six with dinner – greasy sandwiches from a stand near the construction site he’s been working on. He’s a little worried his dad might be mad at him for not vacuuming the living room very well; he’d only started his chores with an hour to spare because he’d been out in the front yard hoping to catch a glimpse of the new neighbours. 

Luckily, his dad is too tired. He smells like cigarettes, which means he’s stopped at a bar. Arthur figures he’s halfway to drunk already, and Arthur probably won’t hear a word from him all night. 

By the time it’s completely dark, Arthur’s dad is passed out on the sofa. Arthur sits in the shadowy part of the porch, breathing evenly. There are a few fireflies because it’s been a humid summer. Arthur watches them to the soundtrack of the washing machine running, a low hum through the open door. The lights are on next door and sometimes there is a shadow of movement across the window. No one comes outside. 

In the morning, the moving truck is gone. He stares at the empty street, a little perplexed. The new neighbours’ trashcan has already been pulled out to the street, overflowing with bubble wrap and butcher paper. It’s seems odd to unload in the night, but Arthur is not the kind of kid who forms an opinion without all the facts. 

He reads on the steps until lunchtime, and then he does the dishes and the laundry. While he’s watering the grass in the front yard, he finally lucks out. A man and a woman leave through the back gate.

The woman is small and dark haired, with the fullest lips Arthur’s ever seen. She smiles dreamily as she nods her head in response to the man following her out of the garden gate. He is tall, and his smile wide and wry. His hands move expressively as he talks, and his eyes crinkle at the corners. They walk together so that their hips bump at every second step. Arthur thinks they must be married. 

As they get into the car, the woman looks up and sees Arthur. She smiles at him and waves her fingers once. He ducks his head, ashamed to have been caught staring, but he waves back anyway, not wanting to seem both rude and too curious.

When they’re gone, Arthur sighs, feeling the familiar curl of slight disappointment settling in his stomach. He’s sure they’re perfectly nice and all, but what eleven year old isn’t hoping for something a little more interesting than a polite married couple when the ‘for sale’ sign goes up next door?

“Hello there,” a voice mutters, just in Arthur’s ear. He swallows a scream. He hates shouting of any kind, but he can’t stop himself from turning around abruptly. He’s still holding the hose, and the water immediately soaks the boy standing behind Arthur, who shrieks.

“Fucking hell!” the kid says, but Arthur’s not too worried because the boy is laughing hysterically.

“Uh…sorry,” Arthur says, releasing the clamp on the nozzle to stop the water flow. “I’m sorry. That was…accidental.”

The boy is smiling, and Arthur guesses he must be the kid of the couple next door, because he’s got that same wide grin of the man but with the woman’s full, soft lips. His hair is dripping into his eyes, and the boy shakes his head like a dog, getting little speckles of water all down Arthur’s shirt. He grimaces so he won’t start laughing as well.

“You’re alright,” the boy says. “It’s too hot anyway.” He pushes his hair out of his eyes un-self-consciously, leaving it in a heap on the top of his head. “I’m Eliot, but no-one calls me that because it’s a ridiculous name. You can call me Eames. I’ve just moved in next door. Are you my new neighbour, or just really in to watering stranger’s gardens?’

“I’m Arthur.”

“You’re very talkative, Arthur.”

“You’re very English, Eames,” Arthur replies, perfectly deadpan.

Eames laughs again, and says, “I’m from London.”

“London?” Arthur asks, dubiously. “You moved from London to Southern Illinois?”

Eames’ mouth twists, like he is trying to decide if he should be a little sad. “I had an unconventional childhood,” he says finally. “I think my parents are trying to make up for it, but maybe they’ve gone a little too far in the opposite direction.”

“Oh,” Arthur says. “Do you want some lemonade? We’ll have to make it from the powder.”

“Do you even know how?” Eames asks, raising an eyebrow. “You look a little young to be traipsing about on your own, making lemonade and watering the grass without ‘adult supervision’.”

“I’m almost twelve,” Arthur replies, annoyed. “How old do you have to be to know not to stick your fingers in the plug sockets or hang your sleeve over the stove?”

Eames puts his hands up defensively. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to suggest you were incompetent or whatever. Run along then – make me some lemonade.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, but he does it anyway.

\---

The thing about best friends in a small town is that you don’t get to choose. Instead, you get exactly the person you need.

It goes that way with Arthur and Eames. Eames is in the grade above Arthur at school, and the two of them are opposites at the most essential levels, but something about their dynamic clicks just right. 

They spend hours laying in the grass in Arthur’s backyard, talking about nothing. They build a blanket fort in Eames’s basement and watch old films on the projector, eating candy until they’re sick with it. They have opposite tastes in books, and the same in music. Neither wants to be just like the other, but they both want to be just right for each other.

Maybe it’s the way Arthur doesn’t take any of Eames’ bullshit, because Eames is pretty much a pathological liar and a kleptomaniac, and someone has to totally ignore his attention-seeking ways before he starts to believe he’s a great as he pretends to be. Maybe it’s the way Eames really listens to Arthur when he talks, somehow knowing that even if Arthur speaks and moves like he’s about twenty years older than he really is, at heart he’s just a little kid who’s starved for affection. 

Maybe it’s the way both of them aren’t made for small town life, not at all, and so instead of growing to fit the town, they grow to fit together.

\---

When Arthur is thirteen and a half, he has the worst Christmas of his life. He can’t imagine that Christmas will be better from there on out; in fact, at the time, it seems like the beginning of everything awful.

Arthur knows his dad is pretty bad as far as fathers go. He understands that even if he could be a little bit better at whatever he’s doing wrong, his dad wouldn’t stop screaming at him and throwing plates so they smash against the wall just left of Arthur’s head. He’s never actually hurt Arthur physically, so Arthur counts that as a win and remembers the time Eames’ mom told him he was absolutely brilliant and gave him a huge hug just for fixing the dishwasher. It’s okay – it’s not great, but it’s okay. Arthur keeps out of his dad’s way for most of the time, anyway.

For Christmas, though, his dad usually makes an effort. They have a plastic tree, which they put in the corner of the living room next to the TV. Arthur hangs two stockings on the wall above the fake fireplace. 

Arthur’s dad buys a rotisserie chicken and makes instant mashed potatoes for Christmas Eve and when Arthur wakes up the next morning he puts his dad’s present, which he bought with the money he makes washing Mrs Leonard’s car every Sunday, under the tree. Arthur opens his present from his Dad, which is usually something Arthur doesn’t really want like a baseball bat or a skateboard, but Arthur doesn’t care because he understands the meaning of _‘it’s the thought that counts’_ better than most people. 

Except, when Arthur’s thirteen, none of this happens. Arthur’s dad forgets, or maybe he doesn’t care enough anymore. Arthur’s not sure, and it doesn’t really matter. On Christmas Eve, he goes out into the backyard where his dad is chain smoking and asks, “Do you want me to make the mashed potatoes?”

“What for?” Arthur’s dad replies.

“Uh…Christmas?” Arthur supplies.

“You really want to play at that? Christmas is for families.”

“Well, what are we?” Arthur asks, knowing he’s already too close to pushing it.

“We ain’t nothing. Go to bed; I can’t deal with you tonight.”

“It’s only four-thirty,” Arthur says. His dad drops his cigarette on the ground and crushes the paper into the cement. His fingers shake. Arthur swallows thickly.

“I said _‘go to bed’_ , Arthur.”

It scares Arthur, how easy it is for him to choke down his tears and shrug as he walks back into the house. He’s not even surprised, really. This past year, their whole relationship has gone from bad to worse. It’s not even based on anything tangible that Arthur can mark out. 

Maybe it’s because his father has been drinking more, or maybe it’s because Arthur doesn’t actively depend on his dad to keep him alive like he did when he was younger. Now they are just two strangers inhabiting the same space suffering from a serious power imbalance. Arthur finds it easier not to pick out patterns. It’s futile. Pure cruelty is random.

Arthur goes upstairs and reads for a long time. He can hear Christmas carols coming from Eames’ house, and the high, sweet bell-like notes of Eames’ mom joining in with the choir on their vintage record player. Arthur falls asleep without turning his light out and dreams that he and Eames are in the house in London that Eames sometimes talks about with a little edge of longing. In Arthur’s dream, they are older and graceful and dressed like gentlemen, and Eames reads “A Christmas Carol” out loud and gives him a blue silk tie that feels like water and money and freedom in his hands.

He wakes up early the next morning, and there is a spark of dreaded hope caught in his chest. Arthur hates feeling hopeful more than anything else, because he’s always disappointed. Nevertheless, he can’t help but think that maybe his father didn’t mean what he said, and that the Christmas tree will be downstairs and they’ll have chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.

He runs downstairs, taking the steps two at a time. 

Of course, nothing’s changed.

His dad’s isn’t even awake; he’s passed out on the sofa with an empty whisky bottle knocked from his fingers, spilling across the floor. 

Arthur goes out to sit on the front porch. It’s way too cold to be sitting around outside, especially in pyjamas, but sometimes Arthur gets a feeling in his stomach that means he just can’t be inside for a minute longer. He gets all riled up and his ribcage starts to feel too small for the size of his breaths and he has to sit in the wind until the feeling subsides. What he wants most is to go away, away, away – to Chicago, maybe – any city, somewhere with space. 

When his fingers turn blue, Arthur goes back in and eats a bowl of cereal. He watches TV until his dad gets up and tells him to wash the dishes, and after he finishes them he lies on his bed and thinks about how big the world is. _Someday,_ Arthur thinks, _I’m going to be out there, instead of in here._

He goes running after dark. Arthur loves to run in the dark because he can’t see anything well, except for the flashes of other people’s lives lit up through their windows. He likes collecting little snippets of information about other people. The Brown family eat the exact same spaghetti Bolognese every night. Roger Smith is building an old car in his shed and he doesn’t want his wife to know. 

He’s free when he runs, unfolding out into all his limbs. He’s the best on the track team, and he always wins when they compete against Saline County, even though he’s a year younger than anyone on their team. People often mistake Arthur for being small, but he isn’t. He’s just slim, and not so gangly like most teenagers are. He falls into just the right pace; the rhythm. Running is all about falling. It’s about tipping down and catching himself, but the fall is the beautiful part. 

When he finally circles back home, there’s a figure slumped against the front steps, sprawled out on the cement pathway. “Eames?” he asks, breathing hard.

“Arthur!” Eames looks really angry, and Arthur wants to tell him to go back home, because he’s in an almost okay mood again and it might break him if even Eames wants to shout at him about God knows what. 

“Merry Christmas,” Arthur says, walking up the steps and around Eames, who is clambering to his feet. If Arthur wasn’t wary of Eames’ tight expression, he’d knock him back down into the grass with that soft-edged violence built into all boys of a certain age. They’d lie in the yard and talk about whatever books Eames got for Christmas and make bets about which of them could read faster. Then, Arthur could go to bed happy instead of just not miserable.

“I came over to give you your present,” Eames says. “So, I knocked on your door and your dad answered, and I asked if I could talk to you, and he said he didn’t know where you’d gone because he hadn’t seen you since this morning, and I asked how your Christmas had been, and he said he was “done putting on a fucking show” because “that boy’s not a kid anymore” and that you hadn’t had Christmas.”

“Yes, well…” Arthur says. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed about how rude his dad is in front of Eames. There’s got to be at least one person in the world who knows Arthur and all the shit he deals with and likes him anyway, and so far, Eames has been it.

“No Christmas, Arthur?”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” Arthur asks, leaning against the front door and scrubbing his hand through his hair. 

The lights in Arthur’s house aren’t on. Eames’ eyes are bright, lit only on one side with the glow coming from streetlamps. “I don’t know, Arthur. I just…I’m just…angry about…him.”

Arthur dips his head and smiles despite himself. “God, Eames. What are _you_ supposed to do about it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t sorted it, yet.”

Arthur sighs at that familiar scheming expression on Eames’ face. “You’re not going to…”

“I’m not going to try to talk to your dad – we both know that wouldn’t help anything. No, don’t worry about it. Look, do you want to stay the night?”

“Are your parents okay with it?”

Eames waves his hand broadly. “They’d have you as a son if only you’d let them.”

“Yes, well, I’ve already got a parent.” Arthur says, smiling despite himself.

Eames doesn’t say anything, because they don’t really talk about Arthur’s dad, but he can see the way Eames frowns and turns away and he knows Eames is thinking _so you say_. Arthur agrees to stay over at Eames’ anyway and the dark line between his brows disappears. 

Arthur doesn’t bother telling his dad where he’s going – he won’t care, anyway. Arthur spends so much time at Eames’ house he’s got a toothbrush and clothes in Eames’ room; he doesn’t think about the fact that he can count the number of times Eames has been inside Arthur’s house on one hand.

Eames’ parents are sitting on the sofa watching a black-and-white film with subtitles when he and Arthur walk past the living room. “Hello, dears,” Eames mother calls when she sees them.

“You can go upstairs, I’ll follow you in a minute,” Eames says, detouring into the living room. 

Arthur takes the stairs two at a time. He stretches out on Eames bed, kicking his shoes off. He pulls a comic out from under his back that he’d accidentally collapsed on. It’s the newest issue, but the light is too dim to read by. The bed smells like Eames, safe and a little stale in that boyish, best friend sort of way. Arthur falls asleep with his face pressed into the pillows, waking only briefly when Eames crawls under the covers, nudging him to one side.

“Goodnight, Arthur,” Eames whispers.

“G’night,” Arthur mumbles back, words turning into a yawn.

When Arthur wakes up, Eames is gone again. Arthur stumbles down the hall to brush his teeth and take a shower. He finds a pair of his jeans in one of Eames’ desk drawers; he can’t find a shirt, so he just puts on one of Eames’. Eames is only two inches taller than Arthur, but he’s broader, so the extra space in the shoulders makes the sleeves hang down to his fingertips and he has to keep pushing them up over his elbows.

He goes down the stairs, and Eames’ mom meets him at the kitchen door. “Merry Christmas, Arthur!” she says, smiling dreamily. “Two pancakes or three?”

Eames’ mom’s version of pancakes is closer to crepes than what Arthur is used to, but they’re amazing anyway. “Three,” he says, smiling.

“Happy Christmas, Arthur,” Eames crows, tumbling in through the kitchen door. He has tape and bits of pine tree in his hair, and Arthur reaches over and knocks them out as Eames sits down next to him. “We’ve decided to have Christmas again, you see, because once wasn’t enough for the great Eames family.”

Arthur knows they’re just doing it for him, of course, and he wants to tell them that they shouldn’t have, or couldn’t have because real people aren’t that heart-wrenchingly lovely. He can’t though, because they smile when he opens the presents they dredged up from somewhere to give him; real presents, things he actually likes. 

He lights up from somewhere no one but Eames can reach.

\---

When school starts back up in January, Eames tries out for the play and Arthur joins French club. The year has been sort of miserable because Eames is in high school now, and Arthur’s still at middle school, but Eames gets out twenty minutes before Arthur, so he walks by the front gates and picks him up on the way home.

Arthur is reciting this French speech he promised he’d give because the teacher says his accent is _flawless_ , so she’s always asking him to do the student presentations even though everyone in the club is supposed to contribute. Eames is reciting his lines for the school play obsessively. He got the part of Feste in ‘Twelfth Night’, despite being a freshman, and he was so excited he’d practically been shaking when he told Arthur. 

They’re about a block from Eames’ house when he turns to Arthur suddenly and stops mumbling Shakespeare under his breath. Arthur shuts his mouth, too, feeling stupid talking to himself without someone else doing the same. 

“I’m going away for a month after Valentines day,” Eames tells him. Arthur tries not to look crushed, but he’s not sure he’s managed it, because Eames’ face falls, and he bumps Arthur’s shoulder. Eames’ family travels a lot, but they’re usually not gone for more than a week, two at the most.

It’s pretty awful when they’re gone – not that he’d tell Eames. He has a few friends at school, but… it’s lonely without Eames.

The especially awful thing is knowing he hasn’t got anywhere to go if his dad gets angry. There are only so many dishes in the house, and Arthur always wonders what his dad will move on to if he runs out. 

He usually spends two or three nights a week at the Eames’; Arthur’s pretty sure that he spends too much time there, but Arthur can’t make himself stay home when it’s dark and cold and his dad is shouting and he knows that Eames’ mom won’t make a fuss, she’ll just send him up to bed, and he really doesn’t think they mind. He’s sure they don’t.

“Look,” Eames says, “I know we don’t usually talk about this, but I don’t want you trapped at home with your dad, so I’m giving you a key to our house and you can go over whenever you want.”

“Eames,” Arthur says, wide-eyed. “You can’t do that, it’s too much.”

“No, it’s really not. I swear to God, if you would let them, my parents would never send you home. I really mean that. If you want, you can water the plants while we’re gone and call it a house-sitting job, okay?”

“I…thanks, Eames.” Arthur says. 

“Okay, but there is something I have to tell you if you’re gonna be there without the rest of us around. This is a really big secret, Arthur – way bigger than anything we’ve ever said to each other before.”

“Bigger than how you never actually kissed Alice Ford?”

“Yes,” Eames nods.

Arthur glances around and drops his voice to a whisper even though the street is totally empty. “Bigger than when you told me that maybe you think you’re slightly gay?” 

“…yes,” Eames says.

“What is it?”

“I think we should go inside, first.”

“Jeez, Eames,” Arthur says, shaking his head and following Eames up the steps into his house. Eames locks the front door behind him, which he almost never remembers to do. Instead of going upstairs into his bedroom, he walks down the hall into the office.

“Okay,” Eames says, once Arthur follows him into the room. He gets down on his hands and knees and pulls the carpet up, sliding it out from under the desk with effort. He rolls it back and Arthur stares between Eames and the cleared floor for a moment, wondering where this is all going.

“The house rules go like this,” Eames says, speaking like he’s repeating something he’s heard all his life. “Misdirect, misdirect again, misdirect with truth.”

“What?” Arthur asks, perplexed. Then Eames pulls the floor up. Arthur has to step out of the way as a trap door is opened. Sandwiched beneath the floorboards are stacks and stacks of carefully wrapped objects. Some are thin and flat like canvases and others look like they might be bowls or vases or jars.

“My parents aren’t salespeople,” Eames says. “They’re art thieves.”

Arthur stares. Eames begins to fidget next to him, not the way Eames always fidgets, flicking at his buttons or glancing around a room like he’s checking escape routes, but actually fidgets, biting his lower lips and crunching his shoulders worriedly. Arthur doesn’t like Eames looking like that, so he forces himself to say _something_. “Seriously?” Arthur says. “Are you _fucking_ joking?”

“Seriously.” Eames replies. His voice is quiet. “And, if someone comes over here looking for them while we’re gone, they aren’t here for a good reason. If they’re looking for something my parents have stolen, first you lie, and you tell them the stash is in Vegas, and if they don’t believe you, you tell them it’s in Paris, and if they don’t believe you again, you show them this.”

“Is this the stash?”

“A little bit of it.”

“So where’s the rest?”

“I don’t know. For my safety.”

“Fuck,” Arthur says. Eames makes a sound like a half-formed nervous laugh.

Arthur takes a few minutes to think about things. He thinks about his ex-military dad’s impeccable moral code and opinions on thievery, and about the fact that despite this Eames and his family are exponentially better people, even if they’re apparently crooks. 

“It’s okay,” he says, finally. “I’m not going to tell or anything.”

Eames laughs properly this time and after shutting the trap door and sliding the carpet back in place he sinks down onto the floor, dragging Arthur with. They sit, knees touching, looking down at the place where the carpet is slightly dented from the lines of the door underneath it.

“I’m sorry this is so weird,” Eames says, quietly.

“Sometimes I think you’re not even a real person, Eames,” Arthur says, pushing his hair out of his face. “I just don’t know what to say about most things you tell me.”

“Are you saying I leave you _speechless_ , Arthur?”

“Ugh,” Arthur sighs, fondly exasperated. “Whatever, I’m hungry.”

“Cheese on toast?” Eames asks.

“Yes, please,” Arthur says, letting Eames pull him easily to his feet. 

\---

On Valentine’s Day three different girls give him cards because they actually _like_ him. Of course, he doesn’t like them back. He doesn’t like anyone, except probably definitely Eames – though he avoids letting himself think about that. He’s also mostly miserable because Eames is going away tomorrow.

Eames doesn’t drop by school to walk home with him because he’s at home packing, so Arthur doesn’t see him until that night when Eames waves him over from the front porch.

“Come for a goodbye dinner,” Eames says. He looks more serious than usual. Arthur walks through the grass, taller on Eames’ lawn than Arthur’s. 

Eames sits down on the porch and Arthur sits two steps in front of him, leaning back to put his elbows on the same step as Eames’ feet. Eames hunches forward and sets his elbows on his knees. He looks out into the road, thoughts set in the distance.

“Are you going to _miss_ me?” Eames says, absently teasing. 

Arthur doesn’t feel like playing their usual game – all sarcasm and affectionate barbs, so instead he just says, “Yes. You know I will.”

“A month isn’t that long,” Eames says. Arthur thinks maybe he feels guilty for leaving, which is stupid, because he’s right: it isn’t that long at all. Eames is his own person. They’re just friends, Arthur hasn’t got any _claim_ to Eames.

“Here, I got you this,” Arthur says after a few moments of comfortable silence. Arthur likes being silent with Eames, sometimes. He feels like maybe their thoughts flow just as easily together as their words.

“You already gave me my birthday present.”

“I know,” Arthur says. “This isn’t really a present, though. It’s homework.”

Eames rips off the newspaper Arthur wrapped the box in carelessly. He grins when he sees what it is. “A disposable camera?” he asks.

“Well, if you’re going to be out there, seeing the world, bring me back a little something of it. Always a thief, never a tourist. You’re missing out on being cultured.”

Eames grins. Arthur feels his hand trace the bumps of his spine. Arthur shivers a little, but doesn’t move away. 

“I think maybe I shouldn’t do this,” Eames says after a moment. That faraway haze is still in his eyes. He seems almost nervous.

“What?” Arthur asks, pretty sure Eames isn’t talking about tracing his back; he does stuff like that all the time. It’s horribly embarrassing, but Arthur knows Eames thinks he’s touch-deprived.

“Look at me,” Eames whispers. Arthur shifts around so he can see Eames in the half-light of the living room windows. Eames’ eyes flutter closed and the fringe of his lashes cast long shadows on his cheeks and Arthur thinks, _holy shit, Eames is going to kiss me._ Then Eames kisses him. He leans down and presses his mouth to Arthur’s – softly, lips dry and closed.

Arthur feels his shoulders tense just as his own eyes flutter shut, tilting his head so his nose won’t bump into Eames’. Eames pulls back and grins.

“There we go,” Eames says, rubbing his thumb across Arthur’s cheek. “You reminded me, before, about how I didn’t _really_ ever kiss Alice Ford. It’s all right for you, being thirteen and unkissed, but I was running out of time, especially if I’m going to stick ahead of the curve.”

Arthur looks at the ground, touching his lips with almost shaky fingers. “You’re awful, Eames,” he says. He means to laugh, but it comes out almost serious. “You know, some people might not want their best friend to just _steal_ their first kiss from them so unceremoniously.”

“Well, let’s hope you’re not one of those people,” Eames murmurs, grinning. 

Eames’ mom calls them in for dinner then. They eat quickly and go up to Eames’ bedroom. Eames tells Arthur about all the extra work the director for the school play is making him do so that he doesn’t fall too far behind in rehearsals, and Arthur tells Eames about this new TV show he’s been watching. Eames falls asleep a little after midnight, fingers tangling into Arthur’s hair.

Arthur shifts, feeling the gentle pressure of Eames hands cradling his skull, and just as he falls asleep, he brings one almost-shaking hand up to touch his lips again, feeling for something different about them, some sort of proof that Eames ever kissed him at all. _It’s Valentine’s Day, Eames_ he thinks, _Did you really do that on Valentine’s Day, you idiot?_.

Arthur sleeps in Eames’ bed every one of the twenty-eight nights he’s gone.

\---

It’s a little after midnight when Arthur wakes to the feeling of Eames collapsing down on the bed beside him. The springs all creak. Eames has gotten in the terrible habit of collapsing angrily or lazily as opposed to sitting down. Arthur is pretty sure this is a side affect of turning sixteen and that he should only be thankful Eames hasn’t got really awful acne too. 

Arthur jolts up. Eames smells stale like the recycled air on a plane; the scent is familiar, and it reminds him of a little under two years ago, the first time he’d stayed at Eames’ while the family was gone, feeling Eames’ stupid friendly kiss every night without meaning to. Waiting for Eames to come home, the feeling of want tugging under his breastbone in a way a thirteen year old can’t really understand.

Not much has changed, except maybe at fifteen, Arthur’s feelings of once-distant and glacially slow-moving longing are a little more obvious to him, and a little too near. 

“How was Rome?” Arthur asks, rubbing his eyes and yawing. Even in the darkness of the room, Eames doesn’t look well. His skin has a healthy glow of sun exposure, but he seems much too thin and there are dark circles of insomnia smudged under his eyes.

“You aren’t supposed to know where we were, Arthur,” Eames says. His voice is a low growl, sounding overused and exhausted. His accent is a bit mixed up, rolling with unusual cadence, which Arthur knows means he must have been playing parts for a con. Eames kicks off his shoes and scoots fully onto the bed so his back can rest against Arthur’s mountain of pillows. 

“You left a load of booking confirmation printouts in your desk. I found them when I was looking for some pencils. You’re terrible about covering your tracks.”

“Why would we need to cover our tracks when you’re here, lolling about like a common vagrant, misdirecting attention?”

“ _I’m_ a common vagrant?” Arthur scoffs. He moves a little to the side so Eames can lie down properly.

They lie still for a long time, Arthur remembering the feel of Eames filling up all the space in a room like he does, and Eames relearning the patterns of the ceiling.

“Rome was awful,” Eames says, finally. He says it quietly, so that Arthur knows it’s a secret. “I slept with this guy.”

Arthur is caught off guard by a sudden, chokingly intense wave of jealousy. He sucks in a gasping breath, praying it sounds like surprise and not terrible, directionless anger. He grits out a carefully neutral, “What was his name?” He’s sure he sounds like there is something horribly wrong with him. He can only hope Eames interprets it as worry.

“I don’t know. I mean, he gave the name Demas, but it probably wasn’t real,” Eames says. He’s turned towards Arthur a little nervously, but Arthur is pretty sure he hasn’t caught on. “He was working the job with us, and…” He coughs and trails away like he can’t make himself finish the sentence.

“Fuck,” Arthur says, breathing through his nose shallowly. “ _Fuck_.”

Arthur knows he’s about to lose it, so he shoves the seething turmoil of emotions away Eames isn’t struck speechless by anything, and it makes Arthur scared that he has been now.

“Hey,” he says, managing, finally to sound slightly natural. “It’s okay, Eames. You can tell me. He didn’t….”

Eames grins with a wry sharp twist to him mouth. “No way. No. Nothing like that. It’s just…. Fuck. I didn’t even like him, I don’t know why I let him…why I basically _lured_ him into bed. It was such a fucking awful mistake …and....”

There is another silence. It’s awkward like most silences between them can’t be.

“But, Eames, _why_ did you do it?” Arthur asks.

Eames looks at Arthur like he is utterly _heartbroken_. “I don’t know…” he whispers. “When we’re on a job, things are different. _I’m different_. I have to be. I just missed…and I just wanted…and…then….”

“Then what,” Arthur murmurs. Eames is barely making sense anymore, and Arthur can’t think straight and everything is getting tangled up between them and Arthur _hates_ it.

“Then he double-crossed us. Had my parents at gunpoint for the money and all. He wasn’t paying attention to me. I had to shoot him to save my mum.”

“Oh.” Arthur waits for a moment to see if there is any more before asking the next question he doesn’t want to ask, but must. “Did you…did he die?”

“No,” Eames says, voice tinged with remembered relief. “No, it was only in the shoulder. But I could have…. I had…I had sex with this guy, you know. Maybe I didn’t really care about him – but still; I felt his pulse under my hands and under my mouth and I could have…killed him. It would have been so fucking easy.”

“But you didn’t.” Arthur swallows against the second swell of sickening jealousy and thinks, _he’s mine, right here, right now, and it doesn’t matter that he’s not mine in the right way because he’s still mine in this moment_. He slides an arm around Eames because he’s allowed without having to ask. Eames is shaking slightly. He feels almost bony, and Arthur doesn’t like that at all. 

“I could have, though,” Eames whispers brokenly into Arthur’s neck. Arthur thinks about how light and carefree Eames always acts with his parents – how he’d never have shown them misery like this, and he realises he is the only person in the whole world who knows Eames’ secret. This is not a secret like Eames not having really kissed Alice Ford or like Eames crying at the end of _Titanic_ every time he watches it. This is so much more, big and dark and only kept safe here. Eames’ lips unconsciously press into Arthur’s collarbone.

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is what happened; the rest is conjecture. Just be in this moment.” Arthur lets his hand rest of Eames’ shoulder, gently. “Just be here, right now…”

It takes all of Arthur’s willpower to leave _with me_ off the end of the sentence.

“I can’t believe I had to put a fucking bullet in my first,” Eames finally says, after a few long moments of silence.

Arthur doesn’t mean to say it, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Well, at least I’ve got your first kiss, right?”

He waits, mentally berating himself, for Eames to freeze up or pull away. Instead, the opposite happens. Eames goes completely boneless, sinking against Arthur like he’s liquid and too tired to hold himself apart from Arthur at all. A sad, wet chuffing laugh blows warmly against Arthur neck. “Yes,” Eames says. “You… _you_ …”

Arthur waits for the rest of the sentence, but it never comes. Eames falls asleep curled against him.

\---

Arthur is halfway home from school, counting cracks in the sidewalk for something to do, when a sleek black sports car comes careening down the street at breakneck speeds and then screeches to an obnoxiously abrupt stop next to Arthur. 

He has a split second to contemplate whether running or screaming is a better tactic for escape, and has just about decided on throwing down his books and legging it, when Eames opens the door, sticking his head out excitedly. The car’s engine is purring ludicrously loud, like a particularly irate jungle cat. 

“I got my license!” Eames proclaims, shooting out of his seat, leaving the keys dangling in the ignition to steer Arthur around to the passenger door and manhandle him in.

“What the fuck,” Arthur grumbles, even as Eames has leapt back into the driver’s seat and slammed his door shut, speeding away.

For the first five minutes, Arthur is occupied with holding on to the dashboard with a white knuckled grip, but it becomes slowly clear that Eames is actually a pretty decent driver who unfortunately operates in terms of controlled chaos. Arthur suspects he may have first learned to drive in the ‘getaway car’ capacity.

“Hey, we’re not going home. Where are you taking me?” Arthur questions, trusting Eames enough that he doesn’t even sound nervous. 

“Harrisburg,” Eames says, turning onto Route Forty-Five. 

“Why?” Arthur asks. He pops open the glove box and digs around until he finds a few sticks of gum. He places one in Eames’ waiting hand without looking up. 

“I want a tattoo, but I’m not having Rover, that guy always hanging around behind the bins at school, do it, because he creeps me out. I am going to an actual parlour.”

“Eames,” Arthur says, a note of disapproval creeping into his voice. “You shouldn’t get a tattoo – that’s a distinguishing mark. If you get caught up in something people can track you with a thing like that.”

“You know, if someone overheard our conversations, they’d never think I was the thief.”

Arthur smiles, choosing to take Eames’ remark as a compliment. 

“Anyway,” Eames continues. “That’s what shirts are for.” 

Arthur scoffs. “You and shirts don’t always get along so well with each other.”

“What are you implying?”

Arthur has to physically restrain himself from actually sticking his tongue out at Eames. “You are a total exhibitionist, Eames – don’t even try to deny it.”

Eames turns his head away, so Arthur can’t hear his reply very well. It sort of sounds like Eames says, “Maybe for you.” 

“Gross,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes. He has to remember not to try to read anything into these kind of ridiculous quips.

They drive without stopping – it’s not too far. Arthur had been slightly concerned that Eames’ plan only extended as far as getting to a town with a slightly non-infested looking parlour, but luckily, it seems Eames has an actual idea of what he’s doing, because once they get to the outskirts of the town, he starts making purposeful turns. He must have asked one of his friends about it. 

“What are you getting?” Arthur asks, turning down the radio so they can talk over it easily. Arthur hadn’t been paying attention anyway. He can’t stop thinking about permanent curves of smooth black calligraphy across Eames’ skin.

“You’ll see,” Eames says, raising one eyebrow ridiculously. 

“Oh, come on; I need to know so I can stop you from getting something really, really ugly. You might think right now that two dogs eating each other is an ironic statement about society, but in twenty years it’ll just be animal cruelty.”

“What do you take me for?” Eames crows with mock insult.

“An asshole.”

Eames smirks, “Did your great-grandmother die and leave you a lifetime supply of _conservative values_ in her will?”

Arthur finally gives in and sticks his tongue out. The thing is, he won’t answer back, because Eames already knows the truth about Arthur, about how he’s an adult trapped in a teenager’s body and how it feels scary good for Arthur to be here with Eames who he can stick his tongue out at like a child.

In the tattoo parlour, Arthur sits in one of the waiting room chairs because Eames insists.

“If this is your first one, you might want some, like, support, man,” the artist says. He doesn’t seem to think it’s crucial, but he pushes them a little on the topic. Arthur can tell they look like two lost kids in here. It doesn’t really bother him. Arthur doesn’t mind too much what other people think of him.

“I’ll be fine,” Eames declares, with the wry smile that signifies to anyone who knows Eames he finds this all very trite and he is, frankly, not bothered.

“It’s not gonna make you weak to have your friends hanging around,” the guy tries once more.

Arthur can’t help but scoff at this. “If there is one thing Eames is not concerned about,” he mumbles, “it’s his masculinity. Eames could probably use a few blows to his self-confidence.”

The artist holds his hands up defensively. “Whatever,” he says. He and Eames disappear into the back. Eames is walking with his _I’m very cool_ slouch which makes Arthur laugh under his breath. 

Arthur gets tired of sitting aimlessly and waiting after about an hour, so he walks down the road to a gas station, leaving his coat on the chair behind him so Eames will know he’s not intending to be gone long if he finishes before Arthur gets back. Arthur buys a coke and a newspaper, and then a bar of chocolate for Eames at the last minute. He thinks about why Eames didn’t want Arthur to see him getting the tattoo. Either Eames really doesn’t want to Arthur to see him ‘weak’, which seems too stupid, or Eames actually wants it to be a surprise for Arthur.

When he gets back he has to wait another forty-five minutes before a girl with pin-straight, inky-black down hair to her waist appears out of the back of the shop to wave Arthur over to her.

“You’re the British kid’s friend, yeah?” she asks.

Arthur nods.

“We’ve got to bandage it up,” she says. “Do you want to see it first?”

“Does Eames want me too?”

“Yeah, he asked me to get you.”

“Okay,” Arthur says. They walk down a hall filled with the distant sound of dentist-like buzzing drills.

“Hey, what’s your name?” she asks, like she wants to know for a particular reason, not just because she’s trying to be polite.

“Arthur,” he replies. She grins as if her suspicions about something have been confirmed.

Arthur understands what she’s thinking when he sees Eames’ tattoo. Eames is looking kind of zoned out when Arthur appears, and Arthur thinks he might have to drive them back. It’s better than having them all drive off a road because Eames is on some kind of tattoo-induced endorphin high.

“What do you think?” Eames asks, voice low and sleepy. He turns around so Arthur can see. 

The tattoo is a letter A. 

Arthur swallows thickly when he sees it. There’s got to be some explanation other than his name, _his name_. Shit.

In all honesty, it’s really beautiful. It’s settled under Eames’ shoulder blade, low enough to be covered up by a shirt, but dark enough that the shadow would be visible through thin, white cotton.

The skin around the mark is red and irritated and the black ink looks stark against his skin, but Arthur can see it for what it will be when it’s totally healed. The letter looks like it’s made partly out of smoke and partly out of thin, leafy vines, and he imagines brushing his thumb over it and thinking _A is for Arthur_ , even if it’s not.

“It’s…I really like it, Eames.” Arthur knows his voice comes out a little soft, and confused, but he can’t help it. “What does it stand for?”

Eames turns to look him in the eye. His expression is sharp, focussed. “For ‘Alice’,” he says. There is something about how he’s looking at Arthur, like he can see everything terrible Arthur’s ever done and ever will do, and still likes him. Eames’ voice drops lower, His mellow is totally gone, but Arthur wants him so much more like this, barely contained energy with a sly façade of nonchalance. “To remember my first kiss.”

Arthur sucks in a sharp breath. He just…sometimes, even for all he _knows_ Eames, he just doesn’t understand him at all. What the fuck is this supposed to mean?

Arthur can’t ask what Eames means by it, though. He’s afraid, like he’s never been afraid of anything in his life, that he has it all wrong, and that Eames is just being the way he is so often, all grand gestures held together too tenuously. How is Arthur supposed to understand why Eames does these things if Eames doesn’t understand them himself?

“Arthur,” Eames says. “Stop thinking so hard. Just…do you like it, really?”

And what else can he say to that, other than the only truth he knows. “Yes. Fuck, I guess really do.”

Eames smiles, and the intensity of the moment bleeds out of the room. The tattoo artist comes back in – Arthur hadn’t even noticed him leave. He bandages Eames up with what basically amounts to some saran wrap, and they both help him put his shirt back on without pulling at his skin too much. 

Arthur drives him back, but Eames has to keep reminding him to check his mirrors and signal at the right times, because he only mostly knows how. They don’t talk about anything important in the car – just ordinary, aimless things, and then they’re home. Arthur hasn’t got any reason to justify staying at Eames’, and he still has homework to do for tomorrow.

When he’s finally in bed – his own bed, which feels alien to him sometimes, because he’s more used to Eames’ – Arthur lets himself imagine that the ‘A’ is all the reasons he wants. Not only because Eames is trying to erase a bad first time with remembrance of another kind of first, and not because Eames is his best friend, but because Eames wants Arthur under his skin and inked into him forever.

\---

Arthur is lingering around the front doors to the auditorium, fanning himself from the May heat with one of the last few programmes he’s meant to be handing out for the production of Guys and Dolls, when Eames appears out the doorway down the hall. His trilby is tipped at a jaunty angle as a finishing touch to his costume, but there are still three paper napkins shoved into the collar of his shirt to protect it from liberal application of foundation.

“Let me get those for you,” Arthur whispers, letting the auditorium door _snick_ shut fully as he moves across the wood floors on silent feet to tug the tissues from Eames shirt. “What are you doing out here anyway; curtain goes up in about two minutes.”

“It’s the last night; I came for luck. And also, to make sure you’re going to the cast party.”

“I thought they were only inviting juniors and seniors in stage crew along. Laura said they were trying to limit the numbers so people can bring dates. Jamie is throwing what he’s calling a ‘leftovers’ party for the rest of us.”

Eames grins deviously. “You don’t even like Jamie. You’ll have to be my date.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, “I really shouldn’t go.”

“Come on…”

Arthur studies Eames closely for a minute. Eames really does seem to want Arthur to go with him, so he finally nods his head in acquiescence. 

“You’ll come along, then?” The stage band is starting up in the other room, and Eames really, absolutely shouldn’t be out here still.

“Yes, yes, fine,” Arthur promises. 

“And what about my good luck?” Eames asks. He’s looming in very close, close enough that Arthur can see that he’s wearing a little eyeliner just to make his eyes stand out, and that his mouth is too red from a flush of nervous energy. For one wild moment, Arthur thinks _I could just lean right over and kiss him. A kiss for luck is fair enough._ He swallows and quickly puts just enough room for air between them.

“Break a leg,” he whispers, voice cracking. Eames face is shuttered, but Arthur can’t tell if he’s just trying to get himself into character for the play, or if he’s hiding some other emotion.

“Eames,” a voice calls from down the hallway, in that harsh whisper of someone who is pretending to be concerned the audience might hear them. “Get your ass back in here – you have fifteen seconds.” 

Eames tips his trilby and dashes back down the hall. Arthur watches him go, feeling a little light-headed.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he whispers under his breath. A few late arrivals come bustling into the empty lobby. They whisper their apologies and Arthur quietly opens the door, allowing them to file one by one to their seats. The curtains are still closed, but the lights are dim, and he sees Mrs Linde give the signal to the conductor to start the overture. 

Arthur sets the rest of the programmes down on his ticket desk and circles around to the back of the theatre where the rest of the stage crew are sorting through props and making sure all the correct ones are in boxes labelled for each scene. They’ve checked and double-checked, and at this point it’s just something for them all to do while they wait for the first changeover. 

The first people are crossing onto the stage now, and from Arthur’s position – he’s practically onstage; they always put him here because he’s the quietest – he can read the print on the newspapers in the stand on set. 

He’s sort of excited. Eames is approximately two leagues ahead of almost everyone else in the production. When Eames plays a part he isn’t _playing_ it, he’s _being_ it, like he was never anyone else. There is something about watching people who are good at what they do that makes Arthur breathless.

After the production is over, Eames comes and finds Arthur while he’s sorting the Hot Box girls’ costumes from their first performance. 

“Right,” Eames says. “I have finished placating my many adoring fans. Elise says the party has pretty much already started. Are you finished here?”

“Yeah, just let me get my bag,” Arthur responds. He stops a moment on his way to the other room, just next to Eames as he passes by him in the doorway.

“By the way, you were fucking amazing.”

Eames looks surprised, and happy. “Yeah?” he asks.

“I thought you were a genius last year, but I think you’ve gotten even better, were it possible.”

“Careful, Arthur, I’ll grow an ego if you continue on like this.” Eames looks down when he smiles. He might be blushing very slightly.

“It’s too late for that,” Arthur says shaking his head in mock-sadness, knowing he ought to stop complimenting Eames now, lest he say something embarrassing.

The drive across town to Elise’s is only five minutes. Arthur’s been many times before because Eames is pretty good friends with Elise and he often tags along with Eames in what he hopes is not an annoying, younger kid way.

On the drive over, Arthur tells Eames about the near disaster they had trying to move the newsstand off stage and how they almost crushed the portly kid playing Nicely Nicely with it and Eames is in fits of hysterics, driving recklessly down the road. By the time they get there, he’s wheezing and his foundation is looking smeary in some places and powdery in others, but it doesn’t really make him any less attractive.

Eames gets out of the car and Arthur pauses for a moment, leaning his head back against the seat and closes his eyes tiredly. 

It’s another year and a half before Eames goes to college. Arthur’s caught between recognising that he’ll never manage to have so much as a crush on someone new when Eames is around being everything Arthur wants, and feeling physically sick at the thought of life without seeing Eames everyday.

Eames knocks on Arthur’s window. “Come on,” he says, sounding hollow through the glass. Arthur gets out of the door and Eames slings a broad, friendly arm across Arthur’s shoulders and puts his trilby on Arthur’s head. 

“I look ridiculous now,” Arthur complains.

“That’s the point,” Eames declares. “Besides, I think it’s very dashing.” He accepts a red plastic cup from a girl at the door and then takes one for Arthur too and passes it over. Arthur frowns with distaste. “I don’t really...”

A shadow passes over Eames face. “Obviously,” he says. “It’s just to hold. You have to look like you’re drinking or people will push it on you. I won’t either.”

Arthur shakes his head. “I don’t mind. Just because I’ve got bad experiences doesn’t mean everyone does. I’m not judging you.”

Eames tilts his chin up like this means something important to him. They’re halfway through the house now, and Eames pauses and empties his cup into a potted tree and fills it with coke from an unopened litre bottle. “If anyone asks,” he says, “It’s half vodka.”

Arthur means it when he says it doesn’t bother him to be around people drinking, but he can’t help but be a little pleased at Eames’ thoughtfulness. 

A few hours later, Arthur is talking to three girls he knows from his math class, which he takes with the grade above. There is some random boy passed out on the couch between them. 

“You should be teaching that class,” Arthur says to the girl closest to him. She has to correct the teacher regularly and they all joke that she should stop being so polite about it and just kick him out of the room.

“Who would do the photocopying then?” her friend laughs. She was playing one of the Mission Band members and her hair is pulled back from her face with military severity for the role. 

“That is kind of true,” says the third girl and Arthur nods along with them. Eames barrels in from the backyard, leaving the screen door wide open behind him. He makes a beeline for Arthur, stepping carelessly over a few people sprawling on the floor. After side stepping a couple dancing to the crappy music, Eames collapses onto the arm of the sofa Arthur is sharing with his math friends and the drunk guy.

“Are you talking about schoolwork,” Eames asks, as if it’s a personal insult for Arthur to do so. “Don’t be so dull. It’s as if you want people to think you’re dull when we both know you aren’t.” Eames leans in conspiratorially to the girl nearest him. He has to lean all the way over Arthur to cup his hand around her ear and he’s practically lying in Arthur’s lap, a gap of skin appearing as his shirt slides up with the arch of his back.

“I bet you didn’t know that Arthur can recite a few of Baudelaire’s prose poems in the original French, eh?” Eames murmurs with a sultry growl. Arthur swallows thickly.

“Normal people don’t find that interesting, Eames.” Arthur says flatly, more in order to avoid sounding breathless than to show annoyance. “What are you doing over here anyway?”

Instead of safely removing himself back to his section of the sofa, Eames leans the rest of his weight on Arthur, lying sprawled across him with his head in Arthur’s lap. He stretches like a cat. The back of Arthur’s neck feels hot. “Some of the girls are starting up a game of spin the bottle. I’ve come to offer you an invitation.”

“Spin the bottle?” Arthur says, already shaking his head. “How old do you think we are?”

“Oh, come on, Arthur. It’s just for fun,” he bites his lower lip a bit, making his thinking face. Arthur’s sure whatever reason Eames next comes up with to get him to join in is going to be horribly embarrassing so he gives Eames a look to convey his seriousness. 

“I won’t do it,” he says. Eames sighs and drags himself to his feet, pretending to be forlorn. 

“So _boring_ ,” Eames whines. 

Arthur shrugs as if to say, _you know that already_. Eames sighs heavily as he wrenches himself to his feet. Arthur watches him amble aimlessly away, caught in a crowd of people lofting an empty glass beer bottle around.

Arthur rubs the back of his neck as if he might be able to brush away the fact that he’s turned on from having Eames close and on top of him. This whole last year, it seems like Eames has been more physical with him than when they were younger, but Arthur is pretty sure he only feels that way because every time Eames touches him he can feel the press of skin for hours afterwards. 

“Arthur….” He turns abruptly, having nearly forgotten the three girls are sitting right there. The girl who’s spoken is avoiding Arthur’s eyes when he looks up at her. She looks like she thinks she might regret what she’s about to say and wants to say it anyway.

“What?” Arthur asks.

She lowers her voice to very quiet, nearly whispering. “I get that this town is not…you know, _accommodating_. But, I wanted you to know that I think you guys seem really good together.”

“What?” Arthur asks, again, blankly. “Eames and I. How do you mean?” He’s sure she _can’t_ mean what she sounds like she means.

“You know,” she pauses and turns to her friend as if wanting confirmation on her theory. “You make a nice couple.”

Arthur tenses up completely, clenching his hands and looking around furtively. He’s stuck between the crawling sensation that his father is just around the corner, overhearing this conversation and a feeling that’s something like embarrassment or shame. It’s not because these three girls have found out some half-truth, but because it’s _only_ a half-truth, and he’s going to have to explain that he doesn’t have Eames and they aren’t together at all, even though he wishes they were so much that it makes it difficult for him to breath sometimes.

“I think you guys have misunderstood something,” he says, leaning back into the sofa and pinching the bridge of his nose against a sudden headache. “We’re not going out,” he sighs.

The girls all look genuinely shocked. Arthur’s glad they weren’t just trying to get a rise out of him. It’d be pretty awful if they were playing some kind of trick.

“We’re really not,” he insists.

“But….” One of the girls starts talking, confused, as if some fact that she thought was indisputable had changed. “The way he is with you is like... My boyfriend isn’t even that sweet with me.”

Arthur laughs dryly. “Eames?” he asks, “Sweet? I think you’re confused.”

“What I mean is, you’re always hanging all over each other, and he drives you everywhere and takes you to parties and you carry each other’s backpacks and your arms brush when you walk and you _get_ each other – you really _know_ each other.”

Arthur shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint, but the touching thing is just Eames. I dunno…he’s English. Maybe that explains it. And the rest of it…we’ve lived next door to each other for almost six years now. If it seems like I know him so well, it’s because I do. He’s not into me like that. If he were, he wouldn’t be able to hide it.”

“But you like him?” the quietest of the three asks.

Arthur winces and then, before he can stop himself, nods. They sit in silence for a few minutes. Arthur refuses to look up.

“He’s not hiding it,” she says, finally.

“What do you mean?” Arthur mumbles.

“He likes you. I think he really likes you. But I think you can’t see it because he’s not hiding it at all and it’s so obvious it’s too big for you to see.”

Arthur smiles at the idea, thinking it’s half-beautiful, half-absurd. He shakes his head and presses his palms to his eyes to make sure there isn’t any chance he’ll start crying; Arthur hates getting emotional. “I’m sorry, I just think you’re wrong. You don’t know him like I do. You don’t know us.”

The quiet girl shrugs and gets to her feet, grabbing an empty plastic cup to go for another drink. “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” she says, and disappears into the crowd of people. Arthur turns to the other two girls, looking for confirmation that he’s the sane one and the other girl was just talking nonsense, but they just raise their eyebrows as if to say, _if only you understood._

Arthur hates how sure some outsider can be about his life just because they aren’t in the soupy, disastrous the middle of it.

\---

Arthur goes out into the back garden. Most of the people who were out here before have migrated into Eames’ now massive game of spin the bottle, which Arthur had to navigate through to get to the back door. 

Eames gave him a little half-wave as Arthur was trekking through the crowds and Arthur feels bad because he blanked Eames. It’s not Eames fault if some girl tipped his thought process into an awful circle of _if only, if only, if only_. It’s not Eames fault he’s just so…so…Eames. 

When Arthur meets someone, there is usually a point well into the friendship when he realises that he’ll never have to worry about crushing on them because he knows so much about them. He ultimately hates and loves too many pieces of them to add romance into the mix. Unfortunately, with Eames, Arthur reached that moment and then kept going, just passed it by until he was too far gone to even turn around.

He stares out at the garden. Everything smudges into darkness a few feet away from him like the fade-to-black at the end of a film. Arthur’s getting tired of being sixteen and not knowing a fucking thing about where he’s going or what he’s supposed to be doing. _Shouldn’t there be some kind of map?_ He thinks, annoyed by his own gloomy thoughts.

“Hey,” someone says from behind him. Arthur recognises the voice and tread as Eames before he turns around. “Are you okay? You looked a bit weird when you walked past before.”

“I’m fine,” Arthur says, leaning back into the chair. He really is fine. He wouldn’t be a proper teenager if he didn’t indulge himself with a little time for angst every now and then. 

“Right,” Eames says. He sits in the grass at Arthur’s feet. 

“You should go back in. Your spin the bottle looked like it was a hit.”

“It was getting boring,” Eames says. His mouth is smeared with other people’s lipstick. 

“Sometimes life _is_ boring, you know. Things can’t be interesting every second of every day.”

“You are,” Eames says, like this is an obvious fact.

“Even when I’m sleeping or reading or watering the grass?” Arthur asks.

“You always interest me. Especially when you water the grass. It make me nostalgic for our first meeting.” Eames smiles demurely and flutters his eyelashes.

“I rue the day I told you that you were a good actor.”

Eames cracks a real grin and tugs Arthur’s sleeve to pull him down into the grass beside him. “It’s dewy,” Arthur says in protest, but he goes easily, anyway. Eames leaves his arm slung out so his shoulder pillows Arthur’s head. Eames has a whole collection of tattoos now; Arthur can see traces of the geometric patterns circling Eames’ upper arm and a few lines of script. He tries to imagine what it would feel like to trace them all slowly and carefully with his fingertip.

“Those girls I was talking to before thought we were dating,” he says, attempting to sound mildly amused. He wouldn’t have mentioned it, but it’s dark and the sounds of the house are muffled, putting him in that particular mood where keeping secrets from Eames seems profoundly wrong. 

Eames is silent, and Arthur listens to his breathing, soft and even, until he starts to get nervous. “Eames?” he asks. “Don’t worry, I told them they we weren’t.”

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like?”

Now it’s Arthur’s turn to be silent for too long. What is the right thing to say to a question like that? He certainly isn’t going blurting out the truth.

He tries to laugh it off, “Wouldn’t be that different from now, I guess.” Arthur says wryly. “I already buy you dinner and hold doors open for you.”

“No, I mean _really_. We like each other fine. It would be kind of _easy_. Don’t you ever think…?”

“Easy?” Arthur feels a twist of low-level anger in the base of his skull. “What am I, a marriage of convenience? You don’t even know if I’m gay.”

“Don’t pull that. Of course I know. I fucking walked in on you in an empty classroom with Rob Valdez once! I know you saw me.”

Eames is tense underneath him. He sounds a little angry too. Arthur doesn’t want to fight with him so he just breaths evenly until the rise and fall of Eames’s chest matches his again. “Maybe I think about it sometimes,” he finally says. 

His statement hangs unanswered for long moments and then Eames says, “You skipped out on spin the bottle.”

Arthur sighs. There is no such thing as a straightforward reply with Eames. “I’m not just trying to be difficult when I say that game is juvenile.”

“You cheated me out of it.”

“It seemed like it went just fine without me.”

Eames rolls onto his side, into Arthur. With his head already cradled by Eames’ arm they are touching all along their sides and Eames’ face is impossibly close to Arthur’s. He smells like coca cola and his eyelashes cast long shadows. Arthur stops breathing. “Not out of the game,” he whispers.

Then, before Arthur has a chance to reply, Eames’ mouth sinks over his in a startlingly deep kiss. It’s nothing like that hesitant press of lips on Eames’ front steps when he was thirteen, or the too-wet and awkward making out he’d done with Rob. Eames kisses hard and dangerous and brutal, and Arthur never considered himself a very good kisser, but something about the way Eames tilts his head makes Arthur respond exactly right. 

They break to gasp for air and then Eames slides his fingers into Arthur’s hair and his leg slips between Arthur’s. They rush to press lips together again, mouths sliding frantically against each other. Eames kisses Arthur’s neck and just under his ear while Arthur shifts against Eames’ leg, clutching at the fabric of his shirt.

The grass feels hot underneath him, and just as Eames leans in to kiss Arthur’s collarbone, Arthur remembers how to think again. He thinks, _what the fuck am I doing?_

“Eames, stop for a second,” Arthur says. His voice comes out wrecked, but he can’t worry about it. All he can think is, _stupid, impulsive Eames doing stupid, impulsive things just to see what will fucking happen and how will I ever be able to forget how good this is?_

Eames rolls away from him instantly, surprising Arthur into sitting up. Eames is on his feet a moment later and Arthur stares up at him. He looks wild in the moonlight. 

“Fuck,” Eames says. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m sorry, Arthur.” His voice is wavering into a low, shaky register.

“What are you—?”

“Fuck. Just, _damn it_. Please, just forget that I did that.” He runs his hands though his hair as if trying to still them. “ _Fuck._ ” 

“No, Eames I just meant—” Arthur says, feeling panic building in his chest.

“I’ve got to… _oh God._ ” Eames turns away, like he’s about to run. Arthur can’t find any words to force either of them to calm down. Usually he’s so good at that, slowing everything so that each moment can be dealt with in turn, but he feels wired hot and his mouth is still swollen and he can barely remember where he is or what he’s doing or anything except Eames and what Eames is thinking and doing and wanting.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Eames whispers, and he kneels and presses his lips to Arthur’s forehead impossibly gently, as if in absolution. Then he’s standing again, and he takes off across the garden climbing over the short wall and Arthur is alone.

“What the _fuck_?” Arthur asks no one. He clamours to his feet and swings himself over the wall, running to catch up with Eames. Arthur’s panting by the time he reaches the car. They’d parked a few blocks from the house earlier. Eames is trying to unlock the doors but his hands are visibly shaking and it’s making it hard for him. 

“Hey, asshole,” Arthur says as he comes to a stop, taking the keys from Eames’ hand and pushing him up against the car door. “How the fuck am I supposed to get home if you just _leave_ me here?”

Eames doesn’t say anything. He looks like a trapped animal, all darting eyes, hunching in on himself. 

“What _was_ that? What do you think you’re _doing_?”

“Look, I’m sorry, Arthur. I shouldn’t have done that. It was stupid of me to just spring that on you, and I wish you would forget it happened, and I’ll try to do the same and then…I don’t know. I’m sorry. Forget it.”

“No.” Arthur says, tipping his chin up defiantly. Eames shifts under Arthur’s arms like he’s going to try to run _again_ , even though there wasn’t really anywhere to go. Arthur presses harder.

“Please.”

“I want to know why you did that. You always do these things and I think, _Eames is being Eames, it’s just his ridiculous way_. But I think it’s me who’s been ridiculous. I think I’m an idiot not to have seen this before. What do you _want_ from me?” Arthur’s voice is dropping lower with tension and fear. Eames won’t look at him.

“Too much. I want too much,” Eames whispers.

“Oh.” Arthur’s pulse flutters in his throat. Perhaps, only now, he’d guessed but he hadn’t really believed….

“It’s the _worst_ thing, wanting you, because you’re Arthur, and you’re my best friend, and just because we’re gay teenagers who like each other doesn’t mean I have to want to fuck you and I’m sorry, but I can’t help it. I just do. I want you and I want to kiss you and I feel like I’ll always want you this way.”

“And when you kissed me when I was thirteen, did you want me then?”

“Not like I do now. Maybe somehow, I don’t know.”

“When you got the tattoo?”

“Yes, probably then. Definitely then.”

“I’m such a fucking idiot.”

Arthur lets all his weight drop forward into Eames, so that Eames has to shift and catch him, holding them close together. Arthur leans in, kissing Eames messily, swallowing his surprised noise and cradling Eames’ head in both hands, tangling his fingers in the hair at the back of Eames’ neck. Eames kisses back right away, moving against Arthur like every part of him is involved in the kiss, not just his mouth. 

“ _Arthur_.” Eames murmurs into Arthur’s gasping mouth.

“But why didn’t you tell me before?” Arthur says, haltingly in the breaks between each meeting of their mouths.

“I didn’t know if you were gay, or if you even liked me, or—”

“Bullshit, _holy fuck, please_ ,” Arthur shivers all down his body as Eames shoves his hands under Arthur’s shirt and against his bare skin, cupping his lower back and wrenching their hips tightly together. “But you knew _ohmygod_. You knew about Rob.”

“I suspected, I thought, maybe. Fucking hell, I don’t know. I’m sorry, Arthur,” Eames pulls back a moment so they can look at each other, face to face. “What…indication did I have from you? Why didn’t _you_ say something to me?”

Arthur looks down. He hadn’t thought of it that way before, exactly. “Why should I think you would like me? You are on another plane of existence, Eames. It’s as if you fell into the house next door to me by accident, and I’m always waiting to wake up one morning and find out you’ve disappeared, because I must have dreamed you up.”

“But, Arthur, you’re _brilliant_. You’re _exceptional_. I…”

Eames stops talking, words blurring into his grin. The car is parked in the dark space between two skirts of light cast by the streetlamps. Eames’s teeth glint as he smiles. Eames spins them around pushing Arthur back into the car, held up by Eames’ hands on his hips so that he’s barely touching the ground. Arthur shudders and Eames slips his knee between Arthur’s legs. His head falls back as his lashes flutter and hits the metal hood of the car with a dull thunk.

“Ow…fuck,” he says. Eames laughs a little. 

“Maybe we should go home,” Eames offers. As if in reflex, Arthur’s fists tighten around Eames’ shirt. A shiver of irrational fear curls up Arthur’s spine. He can’t help but think that Eames might come apart like so much smoke if Arthur releases him for only one moment.

“Hey, hey,” Eames whispers. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says. He means to sound annoyed that Eames would ask, but it comes out as genuine, reassuring himself as much as Eames. He forces himself to release his grip on Eames’ shirt, but Eames catches his hand and squeezes once before walking around to the driver’s side of the car. 

Eames leaves his hand in Arthur’s lap for the ten-minute drive back to his house. Arthur feels tired and relaxed suddenly, sinking lazily into his seat as if the tension of more than just one evening of wanting Eames and not having him is flooding out. Years of tension, _years_ soothed by Eames’ warm palm high on Arthur’s thigh. 

It’s later than Eames had told his parents he’d be home, so they’re both quiet as they come in the house and creep up the stairs. Eames shuts his bedroom door and pushes Arthur up against it in a fluid motion. He’s still in costume, though it’s only shirtsleeves and pinstripe trousers. He’s lost the jacket and Arthur can’t remember what he did with the hat. It makes Arthur laugh quietly. Eames kisses his neck and locks the door. Arthur stills at the distinctive sound of chambers falling. 

“You’ve never locked that before,” he whispers.

“Never been about to have sex with you before, either...” Eames says. “Are…you okay?” His fingers are inching up the bare skin of Arthur’s back, underneath his shirt. 

“Yes,” Arthur says, and means it.

They fuck against the door; quiet, nearly furtive and all long lines of young bodies. They hold each other upright, always with their mouths against each other—not kissing, but gasping the same harsh breaths. Their fingers run over each other even after they’re worn out and collapsed the wrong way in Eames’ bed. They fall asleep slowly, hands clasped together and legs entwined with a kind of innocent possessiveness, holding one another in place.

\---

In October, Arthur’s father hits him for the first and last time. 

Arthur says, “Eames invited me to London for Christmas with his family, so I just wanted to ask if that was okay?”

His father says, “No.”

Arthur asks, “Why not?” Then he makes a mistake. “It’s not like you give a fuck about what I do anyway,” he says.

“Don’t speak to me that way, Arthur.”

Arthur makes a second mistake. “What makes you think you deserve to spoken to like my father? You don’t act like a father. You don’t love me like a father. So why should I love you like a son?”

“I’ve put a roof over your head and fed you. Whatever you need you fucking well have.”

The third mistake:

“The _point_ isn’t to keep me alive. It’s to be a _family_. Men have done better for dogs.”

The thing about being with Eames over the summer is that Arthur realised there was a difference between being okay and being happy. Now, on the edge of all his thoughts about his father, there is the nagging sense that he shouldn’t have to be glad his father isn’t physically abusing him. There is no reason to be _thankful_ for that. He can want more happiness; it isn’t greedy of him to want. 

They are in the kitchen, Arthur’s father at the kitchen table reading the paper, and Arthur standing just inside the doorway, stopping off on his way up to his bedroom. Arthur’s father crosses the space between them in three strides. Arthur’s head snaps back as his father’s hand connects with his face. It is more the surprise and less the feel of his nose crunching under the flat of his father’s palm that makes all the air rush from Arthur’s lungs.

“You don’t have any fucking power in this world, Arthur. The sooner you learn that, the better off you are.”

His father’s hand comes up and closes around Arthur’s throat. He can feel the calluses on his father’s hands brush against the tender places Eames’s kisses had left across his skin only hours before.

“You think you’re smart. You think you’re fast. That doesn’t mean shit. You were born in this town and you’ll die here.” Arthur’s father is shouting, much too loud for how close his face is to Arthur’s.

Arthur’s breaths are short, high gasps. He can taste the trickle of blood from his nose in the back of his mouth. One hand scrabbles wildly at the fingers around his neck while he strikes out wildly with the other, catching a glancing blow against his father’s head that only makes him tighten his hold.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eames slams the kitchen door open. He stands frozen for a moment and then springs forward, throwing Arthur’s father off of him so hard that his father stumbles and falls backwards. Eames steps out in front of Arthur angling his body protectively in front of him. 

“Don’t touch him again,” Eames says, in a low almost-whisper. He follows after the slumped man and stiffens like he’s about to kick him.

“ _Eames_ , stop,” Arthur wheezes. Eames freezes and turns. The tension drops out of him abruptly and he hugs one arm around his own middle.

“Yeah, of course,” he murmurs. He crosses back to Arthur, looking like he wants to grab him and pull him away but Eames hesitates before touching him, hands hovering just above Arthur’s arms, shaking as if it hurts him to have that inch of space between them. 

“I’m okay,” Arthur says, gently. Eames’ hands settle on Arthur’s arms like a sigh and he leads him out the door. They make it to Eames’ backyard before they both stop by some unspoken mutual agreement and fall into the grass together. The outdoors seems only just big enough to hold the storm of conflicting feelings Arthur’s carrying with him. 

“You almost hit my dad,” Arthur says after a few minutes.

“He _did_ hit you,” Eames swallows thickly like his voice would waver otherwise. “You _told_ me he’d never touched you. I can’t believe you lied about that, I can’t _believe_ —”

“That was the first time. I didn’t lie to you. I wouldn’t.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Fuck. Is your nose okay? It doesn’t look broken, does it click if you touch it?”

“It’s not broken; it’s barely bleeding. Calm down, Eames.”

“Fuck,” Eames says, throwing himself back into the grass. He starfishes, limbs straining in all directions. Arthur sighs and leans down next to him, touching his nose gingerly. Eames rolls up onto one elbow and runs his finger gently along the bruise-marks Arthur’s father left on his neck. “Was it about London?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“I hate your father.”

“I know. I’ll have to go back in the morning.”

“You don’t have to.”

“He’s my dad. It’s not forever.”

“Don’t go back. It _kills_ me the way you just act like none of it is so bad. I could protect you, but you won’t let me. _I’m so fucking in love with you,_ and—”

They both go still.

“You’re in love with me?” Arthur says. Eames lies back, watching the movement of the wind through the trees. The leaves are changing colour and they rustle against each other with a light, autumnal whisper. 

“Of course I am,” Eames says finally.

“I won’t go back,” Arthur says, and also: “I love you too.” 

At least some things can be beautiful, if only in the feather-gentle space between them. Some things can be as easy as that.

\---

Eames gets his acceptance letter from Oxford in January. Arthur is actually the one who gets it as he’s shovelling snow from the path in front the house and the mailman just hands him his own mail along with Eames’. He delivers Arthur’s letters to Eames’ now. Arthur doesn’t know how word of these kinds of things get around, and he’d rather it remain a mystery.

“You tell that boy congratulations; he deserves it. He’s too big for a town like this, don’t know why his parents moved here in the first place, really,” Mr Gregory says, smiling.

Arthur flips through the mail and finds the letter to which Mr Gregory must be referring. “How do you know it’s good news?” he asks.

“Feel the weight of that thing. Rejections are always light as a feather. You get to know these things when you’ve been a mailman as long as me.”

“Well, thanks Mr Gregory,” he says, feeling the press of the Christ Church seal in the top corner of the envelope beneath his fingertips. 

Mr Gregory isn’t wrong. Half an hour later, Arthur watches Eames’ callused fingers around his pocket knife, slipping between the glue and paper neatly. Eames is chewing on his lower lip so fiercely Arthur takes pity on it and reaches up to brush his fingers across Eames’ mouth until he stops, still thrilled by the fact that he’s _allowed_. 

Eames’ parents come in, bursting with barely contained anxiousness. Arthur folds his hands into his shirt so he doesn’t try to take the letter from Eames, prolonging this moment of not knowing, in which Eames can be two maybes at once; staying here with Arthur and going away to the university he most wants.

Eames opens it.

“I got in,” he says, sounding shocked.

Arthur isn’t too happy about the jumble of confusing emotional states fighting for dominance in his stomach. On one hand, he’s so genuinely happy for Eames, for the way the letter shakes with excitement in his hands as he reads _Pleased to offer you…_. On the other hand, he has this sick sense of jealousy in the pit of his stomach, which he hates, but can’t ignore. That tiny part of him is a little angry that Eames has an out. Eames has always had an out where Arthur never did. The closest Arthur has to escape is Eames.

The worst feeling is the sense of looming loss. In terms of their relationship, he knows he and Eames could make it through something like this. If Arthur were the type, he’d believe that he and Eames were made _just for each other_. Except, England is very far away, and three years is a very long time. It’s not as if Eames is going to come back and live here again after university; Eames wouldn’t promise it, and Arthur wouldn’t ask him to. Maybe long distance _could_ work for three years, but it couldn’t work forever. Arthur doesn’t want Eames far away.

Eames’ parents enfold him in massive hugs, and Eames’ dad declares they’re all going out for dinner to celebrate. They go into the other room to make reservations, and Arthur is left standing with Eames alone again. He doesn’t know what to say to make Eames understand that Arthur wants him to go and wants him to stay and that he’s happy and miserable at the same time.

“You don’t have to pretend to be happy,” Eames says, after a moment. Arthur hates himself a little more, because now that Eames isn’t tightly schooling his expression, Arthur realises that he’s forcing joy for the sake of his parents. Arthur’s clearly not doing a very good job of being supportive. “Maybe I won’t even go. I’ll get an acceptance from the University of Chicago; you know I will.”

“Don’t be stupid, Eames. I’m going to hate that you aren’t here, absolutely. But, I’ll love that you’re there since it’s where you want to be. Look at me and tell me I’m lying when I say I am so _fucking_ proud.”

Eames moves towards him and presses his forehead against Arthur’s. It doesn’t feel like they’re teenagers anymore. Eames feels vivid and close and sharp and like he could hurt Arthur, like he already has hurt him even as much as he’s loved him.

Eames’ breath is soft with Arthur’s, and the long, dark sweep of his eyelashes flutter, tangling with Arthur’s as he blinks. Nothing about them is young, right now. It makes Arthur a little scared to realise that he is suddenly part of the real world, that as much as he’s felt like he was twice as much an adult as most people he’s met, as much as he _knows_ about difficult things, it’s really happening now.

“Maybe I don’t want to leave you. Maybe I’ll stay because _I_ want to stay, not because you need me to,” Eames whispers.

“No, Eames; it’s okay,” Arthur murmurs. “It’s okay for you to leave me because you don’t want to.”

“But, Arthur….” Eames starts.

“Going away doesn’t mean you’re losing me. I swear I won’t lose you without a fight,” Arthur interrupts.

Eames smiles, wryly. “You don’t do anything without a fight.”

“Excuse me, but I’ll have you know I’m the composed and sensible one out of the two of us.” Arthur says, turning his chin up.

“At least that’s what you’ve fooled everyone into thinking,” Eames offers. Arthur shrugs a concession.

Eames’ mother comes back into the room, and Arthur steps back to put a reasonable distance between them. Their relationship is probably the worst kept secret in the world, but it’s still _technically_ a secret.

Arthur decides not to tag along on their family dinner. He’ been trying to give Eames’ parent’s some space so they won’t seem him as to much of a burden, living with them. 

He climbs up the stairs to Eames’ bedroom and goes to sleep earlier than normal. Eames gets back from dinner, but he doesn’t come upstairs for until around two in the morning. He trips over the camp bed that Arthur has been supposedly sleeping on for the last few months. Arthur blinks sleepily, waking at the sound. His lips are blue with cold and he fits his freezing hands under Arthur’s shirt to warm them up. Arthur nearly shrieks.

“Eames,” he whispers instead, shivering. “Fuck, that’s cold. What have you been doing?” 

“Making snow angels,” Eames whispers back. He sheds his wet boots on the floor.

“You are a nutcase.” Arthur sighs and crawls back under the covers, rolling to the edge to make room for Eames. 

They have close, quiet sex, silence broken only by the sound of harsh breathing, always trying to press together as much bare skin as possible. They both clutch at each other a little too tightly and Eames’ fingers leave desperate bruises on Arthur’s hips that he stares at in the mirror for a long time the next morning, thinking _More things than these will fade._

\---

Arthur’s last year of high school can be described as grey. Arthur feels endlessly grateful to Eames’ parents for letting him live with them even after Eames is gone. They’re brilliant of course, but he hates feeling indebted to them.

Time passes, and he takes his SATs and gets predictably good marks. He feels like he spends most of the year asleep. Eames comes home for Christmas and Arthur wakes up for a little while; and he leaves and Arthur goes straight back to bed.

In the spring, Arthur applies to West Point. Eames comes home for Easter, and they have three weeks of laying in the grass in the backyard, hands palm to palm like some kind of mid-American Romeo and Juliet, and Arthur suspends the outside world in favour of the one that blooms up between them when they’re together. 

Then Arthur tells Eames he’s been accepted to West Point. 

They fight.

“It’s the fucking U. S. military, Arthur. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Eames says, voice flat and quiet. “What are you trying to prove?”

“I’m not trying to prove anything,” Arthur says back, emotionlessly. They’re in Eames’ kitchen; it’s the middle of the day and his parent’s are still at work. Eames was watching Arthur folding laundry, but now they’re just standing in the on opposite sides of the table, shoulders squared like they’re about to face off.

They don’t fight like other people fight, because Arthur doesn’t yell; he hates yelling more than anything. Eames doesn’t yell because yelling at Arthur is almost unforgivable – it makes Eames sick to think of yelling at Arthur. It would be too close to the way Arthur’s father is.

“Really, Arthur. Are you sure? This has nothing to do with your father? I’m here to tell you you’re fucking fooling yourself if you think that the way he is will ever change.”

“You really think that I’m that stupid? This has nothing to do with him. You think everything that you don’t love about me is a product of a shitty upbringing and you act as if I should be forgiven for it. I’m sorry to tell you, Eames, but some of my ideas are actually _just mine_.”

“I know you have different ideas. That’s fine. But this isn’t just some idea – it’s your life. Can’t you see that this is some stupid act of desperation? You don’t have to become canon fodder to get out of this town.”

“West Point graduates aren’t canon fodder, Eames. I’m doing something real with myself, here. I was so good about Oxford. I wish you’d…I wish…”

Eames cuts over Arthur before he can finish his sentence and his voice is starting to gain a little volume. “You don’t get to bring Oxford into this. That ship has sailed. It’s cruel to hold that over my head.”

“I’m not holding it over your head, I’m just saying you could be proud of me.” He hates that he sounds like a whiny, underappreciated child.

“You aren’t made for the military, Arthur. You just aren’t.” Eames says it like its some kind of obvious fact that Arthur is too stupid to see and it makes him even angrier.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean. You’re wrong—and you are wrong sometimes, I hope you know. I’m being practical. I want to get out of this town and I don’t want to come back.”

“So get a fucking scholarship to some brilliant uni, Arthur,” Eames growls. “I’d pay for you to go where ever you wanted if you don’t get one. You know that, anyway.”

“Damn it!” Arthur looks wounded. “I can’t…you know I can’t accept something like that. I’ve lived out of your pocket since I was eleven, I’m not that kid now. I certainly don’t want to be.”

“You’d get a scholarship.”

“I don’t _want_ a scholarship. I don’t need or want your money or anyone elses’ I don’t want to go to another college, I don’t want to just get out. I want to go to the place I _fucking applied_ , which is West Point.”

“I _want_ you to not be the extension of a bureaucratic authoritarian killing machine. Is that so wrong? I don’t want you doing it because of your stupid dad and his stupid war hero past.” 

Arthur’s mouth twists sourly. “Fuck you, Eames. It’s not my dad, I don’t care about my fucking dad. It’s because of my mother, okay? My mother was in the military, too, and she died for her country, and if it was good enough for her, it’s fucking well good enough for me. I’d be good in the military. I can be strong and sharp like she was.”

That shuts Eames up for a minute. Arthur’s _never_ said a word about his mother before. He’s still vibrating with anger, all pent up and nothing to do with it. 

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he says, finally harsh and nearly whispering. “That’s a different world that I don’t want to live in. You’re going to be farther away from me than just an ocean and part of a continent and I don’t think I’ll be able to follow you there.”

The cage of hot, seething anger in Arthur’s chest breaks apart and he slumps against the wall. Eames isn’t right about the military being the wrong place for Arthur. There is something quick and precise and deadly in Arthur – a part of him he doesn’t understand – which needs to get out and be used, and there isn’t any other good place for it. But Eames might be right about this.

“Try, Eames,” Arthur says. “Please just try to stay with me. I’m going to West Point because I want to, but I’m only fucking happy when I know you’re still mine.”

\---

Arthur loves college. It’s probably the hardest he’s ever worked in his life, and he’s totally exhausted all the time, but he feels a part of something, and the sense of usefulness and belonging sinks down into his bones and makes him proud of himself like he’s never been in his entire life. 

It would be better if he didn’t sometimes wake up in the night in a deep, black depression. He doesn’t remember the dreams that cause it, just the hollowness they leave behind. It’s dark in his room and only the pillows are visible, catching moonlight on white cotton, making it burn bright like a candle. 

Arthur’s never been homesick, and he doesn’t think he is now. The emptiness, he’s sure, is a kind of Eamesickness. He’s afraid, so afraid, and so sure that he and Eames are finished in all the ways that matter, and it’s only stubbornness that keeps them calling each other once a week and making plans for summer. He’s afraid he’ll fall apart if he loses Eames. He’s afraid he won’t fall apart at all.

He finishes college a different person than when he’s started, but the parts of him that exist for Eames are not gone, only changed. Eames flies in from London for his graduation. He’s been working some kind of boring office job that he never talks about. Arthur suspects he’s doing criminal work on the side; Arthur’s moral code has become stricter in college, and they both choose not to talk about it. There are a lot of things they don’t talk about anymore, either because they forget to mention them or for some other reason Arthur doesn’t want to examine too closely. 

Arthur’s father doesn’t show up at his graduation. They haven’t spoken except since Arthur first left for college. Arthur goes to London for Christmas and Easter to visit Eames. He tries not to let it affect him, but Eames can clearly tell he’s sad about it. Eames’ parents have come as well, and they hug him and tell him they’re proud and that he’s brilliant, which only mostly makes up for his father’s absence. He wishes he didn’t care at all, but can’t quite convince himself to forget about his dad.

“I want to kiss you,” Eames says. They’re standing in a sea of young people in pristine uniforms and proud parents taking photos.

“Not really the place for it,” Arthur replies, smiling. “I think you can get away with a manly shoulder hug if you’d like. I told some people earlier that you’re my cousin.”

Eames leans into him, enfolding Arthur in a hug that’s a little too close for cousins. Arthur doesn’t mind much – no one is paying attention.

“My parents want to take you out to dinner.” 

“They’re being too nice to me,” Arthur says. They’d given him an absolutely gorgeous watch as a gift earlier, and Arthur’s almost afraid to wear it because it’s too beautiful for him to own. People will probably think he’s stolen it.

“They think they can get away with it today. You must know that they really, really love you as a second son.”

“I hope you don’t think of me as a brother,” Arthur says dryly.

“That’s my line.” Eames grins. “If you don’t need me to lower the tone of the conversation, what good am I?”

“You do me all sorts of good, Mr Eames,” Arthur says, voice sounding even more fond and affectionate than he’d intended. Eames reaches out and adjusts the precise lines of Arthur’s uniform, fingers resting on the brass buttons. 

“You look sharp,” Eames murmurs. “This uniform business is giving me all sorts of terrible ideas. You really wouldn’t approve of them.”

“Live in hope,” Arthur suggests. 

He forgets, when they’ve been away from each other for a long time, how much better everything is when he’s around Eames. He forgets that he needs Eames – that he is actually a better person in his presence. At this moment, he feels like he and Eames could make it forever, and he doesn’t care that they fell in love too young, or that they live in different worlds, because those things don’t matter. But Eames will leave, and Arthur will forget. He always forgets.

He breathes slowly, so he won’t panic. “Eames, tell me that someday we’re going to live in a house with a fence and a cat and flowerbeds, and you’ll do the crossword while I make coffee every Sunday.”

“No.” Eames says. He smells like wood smoke.

“Why not?” 

“I don’t like lying to you.”

Arthur stiffens.

“But, darling, I will tell you this: the two of us are always running towards the same beautiful, dangerous thing. Maybe we aren’t always going there together, at least we’ll both be in the same place at the end.”

\---

When Arthur is twenty-two, he is recruited into the dream-share programme. The same year, Eames goes missing for six months and when he finally gets in touch again, the e-mail only says: “Things are a bit hectic at the moment. My phone has been disconnected so I’ll call you when I’m in easy reach again.”

Arthur, who hasn’t had more than three hours of sleep uninterrupted by painfully gruesome, somnacin-induced nightmares in longer than he can remember, writes multiple lengthy replies about how worried he’s been. Arthur is bone-deep angry and achingly lonely and terrified for whatever disaster Eames must have gotten himself into. They haven’t seen each other in over a year. 

Arthur has an internalised mental breakdown that lasts three days. Sits blankly staring at walls unless he’s been directly told to do something and all his thoughts feel like separate islands in his head, like he cannot _connect_ anymore. 

When he scrapes himself back together he picks up some idiot cadet in a bar that looks like Eames and has sex with him in the back of a car. He feels sick with guilt until he realises that this is the end. He’s reached the end of the road with Eames. 

If joining the military represented entering another world from the one Eames occupied, the dream-share programme and the espionage he’s being trained to use lucid-dreaming for represent a whole different universe. 

Eames replies to Arthur’s long e-mails a month and three weeks after he’d sent them with a single word: “Sorry.” 

Arthur deletes the e-mail after one perfunctory glance. 

That night he sleeps a solid six-hours for the first time in what seems like forever, dreaming about Eames instead of re-running training drills of endless, innocent deaths at his own hands. In the dream, he and Eames are lying in the grass behind Elise’s house with the noise from the cast party rippling softly over them and Eames is whispering against Arthur’s neck. Arthur is crying in the dream, saying: “I can’t hear you” again and again.

He wakes dry-eyed. 

\---

When Arthur is twenty-four, he finishes his fifth military mission with the dream-share programme and decides that if he is going to use cutting edge technology invented to revolutionise education and training for unjustified personal gain, he’d rather the personal gain be his own and not the military’s.

He steals three PASIV devices and goes home to Illinois where he tells his father about the time he and Eames had sex on the kitchen table and not to expect anymore Christmas cards. He tells him father a lot of things he’d always wanted to say, but had never been able to before. 

Arthur’s father finally throws a dish that actually manages to hit Arthur. The scar stays for the rest of Arthur’s life – a thin line at the edge of his hairline only visible to someone paying close attention. 

That night, bandage taped to his head, Arthur sneaks through the window into what used to be Eames’ bedroom. The Eameses don’t live here anymore. The room is an office now, beige paint covering up the fantastical pencil sketches Eames used to draw on the walls when he was bored. The carpet is still the same and Arthur crouches in corner of the room and peels it back a bit to see the careful heart carved into the floor with E+A inscribed in the middle.

Arthur swallows hard and misses Eames so much it hurts his bones. 

\---

“I’m not telling you we can’t pull the job without a forger,” Arthur says, breathless. He’s running, but he’s only a block from home, so he hadn’t bothered to tell Farley to call him back later. “I’m just saying. We can do the job, or we can do the job well. And I’m a perfectionist.”

Farley’s voice comes crackling down the line. He sounds resigned, so Arthur knows he’s already won. “Who are we going to bring in this late? I don’t know anyone good enough to pick up a whole new character with only a week and a half to go; do you?”

“It’s not my fault you’ve been procrastinating. Have you tried Torvald?” Arthur slows as he nears his flat, digging in his pocket for keys. 

“He can’t do women for shit,” Farley vetoes. Arthur sets his gun on the table next to the door and drops his keys next to it, flicking the lights on as his breathing evens out again. He’s going to have to start running farther. Five miles and the sad, caged-in feeling has barely abated, still pressed tight against the sides of his ribs and the tips of his fingers.

“What about the guy Caroline was raving about the last job we pulled together?”

“The English one, you mean?”

“Yeah. I think he goes by James. I know Dom Cobb knows someone with his contact details, but you’ll have to call; I’m not about to interrupt his honeymoon. Mal would kill me. You have the excuse of not knowing them well.”

“Fine, whatever. This guy better be pretty fucking amazing. Forgers are always high maintenance.”

\---

Arthur hears his voice first. It’s unmistakable. That easy, gravelly, almost implacable English drawl. It makes Arthur shiver sweetly. Then he freaks the fuck out.

Arthur lunges over his desk, drawing his gun before Eames has even turned around from talking to Farley. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Arthur asks, not breathing. There is a roaring sound in his ears that makes it difficult to think and Arthur is scared like he hasn’t been in a long time. Eames is in his past and these days, Arthur’s past and present don’t mix.

To his credit, Eames draws his own gun with same easy, practiced speed. “I could say the same to you,” he says, softly. It’s the tone of voice he used to use whispering into Arthur’s neck.

“I’m the fucking point man,” Arthur grits out.

Eames shoves his gun back in to his holster, grinning broadly. “Well, I’m the fucking forger,” Eames replies grandly. Then he turns on his heel, nodding to Farley as if to say, _catch you later._

“What the hell?” Farley yells. “Arthur, _what the hell_?” 

Arthur manages to start breathing again and collapses down in his desk chair. His collar is too tight. “I can’t fucking believe…” he whispers to himself.

He doesn’t finish the sentence because there are too many things he can’t believe about this situation. Eames is a forger. Eames works in underground dream-share. Eames has been so close to Arthur for so long without him ever realising. Eames has never been farther away. Arthur could never have guessed he’d find Eames here. And if he can’t second-guess Eames, if he can’t even imagine Eames in this place, how can he still _know_ him? Arthur can’t bring this world and the Eames of his memory together, so that Eames must not really exist.

The second day, they don’t speak. Not a single word to each other, even when it’s inconvenient.

“Look,” Farley says, clearly exasperated. His hand is gripping Arthur’s elbow a little too tightly, creating visible wrinkles in the fabric of his suit. “I don’t know what the hell is going on between you and James, and, frankly, I don’t care, but if you can’t even summon enough civility to speak to each other, one of you will have to go.”

“Our behaviour is exemplary. We’re being _very professional_.”

“You really aren’t. You haven’t been to look at the diagrams yet because they’re all on his desk. That is fucking cowardly.”

Arthur scowls.

“One of you will have to go, and it’ll be him, because he hasn’t earned my loyalty like you have. But I’ve heard that he is a fucking genius, and I will not be happy if you lose me a forger who might as well be an artist, yeah? You’re the one who wanted him brought in to start with.”

“Not _him_ ,” Arthur growls.

“Whatever, man,” Farley says, throwing his hands up with exasperation. “Get your shit together.”

“Yeah, fine,” Arthur sighs. He doesn’t know how to fix any of this without talking to Eames, but he doesn’t know how to talk to Eames anymore.

They do a dry run in the dream on the fourth day. Eames has only had a week to practise, but his forgery is perfect. He’s breathtakingly good at the work, and Arthur remembers that it used to be like that with Eames. He would pick things up so easily; it was a gift to watch him be good at something because it was like an act of love more than perfection.

Arthur feels Eames’ eyes on him sometimes, too, and he doesn’t mean to show off but he thinks he might be anyway. Farley pauses next to him as they’re putting away the PASIV later that afternoon. “That went smooth, today, Arthur. I didn’t know you could do that thing with the knives. I mean, shit – it was something. If it goes like that on the day, we’ll be aces.”

Arthur shrugs. If Arthur could only get over the dark, empty drop of his stomach every time he saw Eames out of the corner of his eye, all his mannerisms and the way he holds himself just _slightly different_ than Arthur remembered, maybe they would make a perfect team.

It’s a nerve-wracking thought in some ways. With Eames being as excellent at forgery as he is, and Arthur having worked his way to being possibly the most-sought Point Man in the business, it’s likely they’ll end up working together again. He’s not sure if he can handle it, having to form a relationship of estranged business partners with the first (and if he’s honest with himself, only) person he’s ever fallen in love with.

A few hours later, Arthur is going through the plans for an apartment building maze with the architect when Farley comes storming across the room, a sheaf of papers bundled up in his arms, looking red with rage.

“Arthur,” he shouts. He’s breathing in angry, shallow intakes. “What the fuck is this? Did you see these reports? Have you given these a _fucking thought_! These completely undermine—”

“They’re fine,” Arthur starts to explain, glancing at the papers Farley is clutching. “The new psych evals rule out an unstable dream surface. Those are old news.”

Farley spits at the floor near Arthur’s feet, voice rising even louder. “And you didn’t think I need to know about this? I don’t give a fuck if it’s old news, this intel could jeopardise the whole job!”

He’s screaming by the end, and Arthur can feel himself wincing a little bit. “Farley, calm down, it’s just—”

“I don’t want _to hear_ your bullshit! You were going to let me go in there unprepared! I can’t…” Farley raises his arm and Arthur knows he’s about to throw the coffee cup clenched in his hand when Eames appears out of nowhere, grabbing Farley’s arm to twist him off balance, swinging his other arm around to punch Farley in the jaw. Farley’s head snaps back with an awful, sickening noise. Arthur’s never even heard anything like it in a dream. 

The papers drop from Farley’s arm as he crumples to his knees, fluttering around Eames and Farley like a flock of white, settling birds. For a moment all Arthur can think is _those are going to take so long to file again_ ; then Eames, who still hasn’t let go of Farley’s arm, pulls him violently close and says in a low, dangerous voice, “Do not yell at Arthur, and do not throw things at him.” He drops Farley’s arm and steps away, allowing Farley to slump forward, gasping.

Eames ambles out the front door, Arthur still frozen, the architect with her mouth hanging open, and the chemist in to doorway to the other room with her jaw dropped as well.

“What the fuck?” Farley wheezes.

Arthur fists his hands in his sleeves and follows Eames out the front door without saying a word.

It’s late afternoon. The streetlights are already on, but there is enough sunlight left to see well. The shade of the hour is blue, hazing the edges of every building into neo-impressionism. 

He finds Eames smoking, body a long, curved line against the aluminium wall of the warehouse. He’d been easy in his violence towards Farley, but Arthur can see now that his fingers are shaking as they cup around the Clementine-coloured ash dropping off the end of the cigarette. 

“I’m not the same kid you knew,” Arthur says, quietly, folding his arms as he leans against the wall. “You must understand that, at least. The two of us are different people, and we don’t know each other anymore.”

“You don’t like it when people yell.” 

Eames doesn’t look at him. His jaw-line is sharp and lean, and Arthur wonders if his stubble would feel the same as Arthur remembers under his fingertips.

“I didn’t like it. Past tense. It don’t care about it anymore.”

“He was going to throw a cup of coffee at your _head_. There was no fucking way—”

“There are things that have happened to me since I last saw you that are much worse than that. I don’t know where you get off appearing here and trying to fucking protect me.”

“That’s what I’ve _always done_ for you.”

“Not for me. For some other Arthur. You don’t know me.” Arthur feels like he’s lying to Eames, but he doesn’t understand why.

“You keep saying that, but—”

“No, Eames – we’re _different_ now. _You don’t know me_.” 

“If I don’t know you, than who does?” Eames says, sounding raw. “Because I taught you how to ride a bicycle and I read you sonnets so you could study for your English finals and I knew the feel of your skin before anyone else ever did. So who knows you now, Arthur?”

“No one,” Arthur replies, voice perfectly flat. “And I worked for that.”

For a moment, Eames looks devastatingly heartbroken, and then his face twists and his expression is blank. “Fine,” Eames says. “Just remember that you don’t know me either.”

He turns away and the cadence of his walk is one that Arthur has never seen before. Arthur wants to tell Eames that not knowing him is the only thing Arthur thinks about anymore – that it would be impossible for him to forget it.

\---

They do the job for real a few days later. It is an unmitigated disaster. 

It turns out to be the Chemist’s fault in the end. They go under and half-way through the extraction, the mark slips away from them during the time he’s supposed  
to spend with Eames and Farley. They run themselves ragged for three hours of dream-time frantically looking for him. The problem, as they discover, is not that the mark has given them slip – it’s that he’s woken up. 

They come around to a room full of well-armed law enforcement. It’s a narrow escape. They loose the architect down a corridor and the rest of them only just make it out. Arthur has three bullet grazes along his arms and he’s losing enough blood that it’s starting to make him light-headed, but it’s nothing that won’t fix easily. Farley’s left wrist is broken. Eames is the least injured, but he’ll still be well-bruised in the morning. 

When they’ve run a few blocks from the hotel, Farley pulls them down an alley and passes over a bag.

“I sorted out two safe-houses, so we can split into pairs. I’ll take one, you two take the other. I put the keys and the map in here, so you guys should have everything you need.”

“Farley, I’m not going with—” Arthur begins to say.

Farley cuts him off. “Oh, no,” he says. “Maybe we aren’t the best of friends, the three of us, but I can still do you a favour. You two need to work your shit out because right now you’re a danger to the fucking business. This is a perfect opportunity. Get to the safe-house, and don’t move for at least two weeks, preferably more. Nice knowing you.”

Farley disappears into the beat-up pickup truck he’d parked down the street for the getaway, leaving Arthur and Eames staring at each other in the dark. Arthur’s blood smells like wet metal. He passes out in a rush of coloured black spots and the pavement rears up to meet him.

\---

Arthur wakes to fingers brushing with gentle familiarity through his hair. His eyes blink open slowly. It takes a few minutes to adjust to the lack of light. 

Eames is sitting propped-up against the headboard next to Arthur. The room they are in is tiny, big enough only to fit the cramped double bed they are both occupying, a folding card table with a camp stove, and two ratty suitcases stacked one on top of the other. 

Eames is watching Arthur with an expression that he has seen so often. It feels more like home to him than anything he’s felt in a long time, and Arthur coughs against the rising breathlessness in his throat, which is about as close to tears as Arthur’s been since college.

It’s the hour of the night when being awake feels most lonely and most beautiful to Arthur, as though he’s the only one in the whole world, and everything is there just for him. Here, Eames is home, and looking down at him, and they’re cocooned together in the moment like they used to be, when they were both teenagers and they’d talk until there weren’t any words left to make into new sentences. He suddenly can’t remember the sickening feelings of the days before, when there were so many things completely changed in Eames that he was hard to recognise.

“Eliot Eames,” he says aloud, voice scratchy with sleep. He says it just to prove he knows.

“I’m sorry for waking you,” Eames says. “I was just…”

Arthur wants to shift around but he’s afraid that Eames will stop touching him if he moves even a little. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t _fucking_ know, because Eames is something foreign to him, and yet he still wants to feel Eames’ hands pressed against his skin, still wants to feel Eames’ fingers in his hair with the same want he held at fifteen. When Arthur doesn’t _know_ he panics, and he gets that old track-team feeling, like he just needs to get out and run and run until he can’t breath, and he’s soothed by absolute exhaustion. 

He waits for that same feeling to creep up over him and pull him away, but it doesn’t come.

He remembers that there used to be two things that could calm him down. One of them was running, and one of them was Eames.

Eames’ fingers slip down to brush against the corners of Arthur’s eyes. His calluses are in all different places; right for guns instead of pencils. “You’re looking panicked, darling.”

“What are you…?” Arthur tries to swallow the words down, so they can just lie here like this forever, and everything that changed what they are can stay just out of the frame, permanently suspended. He doesn’t want Eames. He doesn’t want Eames to _leave_. The words stick in his mouth and he has to say them: “What are you doing?”

“I woke up,” Eames murmurs. “And you were just…. Jesus Christ.” Eames laughs a little, and finally he says, “You sleep exactly the same way you always have.”

“What?” Arthur asks. 

“I don’t know why, but I thought you’d sleep different now… but you don’t. You sleep just them same. You’ve always slept the same. Your limbs sprawl out in all the directions they possibly can and you go pliant, yet you cling to the bed like a child. It makes me…it makes me….”

“What?” Arthur whispers again, just to say something. Eames’ fingers are in his hair and his gaze is soft and direct. Arthur feels innocent, the way he hasn’t for such a very long time.

“It makes me want you. Maybe…I forgot how to want people.”

Arthur’s back in time; he’s sixteen and Eames shaking with anger over Arthur’s awful father because all Eames really wants is for Arthur to be happy, and just that, just the fact that someone wants him to be happy makes him so.

The trouble is, he _isn’t_ sixteen, and they _aren’t_ the same people anymore. Arthur still believes what he’d said to Eames before, outside the warehouse. Only, now, he’s beginning to see that there is more than one way of dealing with the distance between them. 

Everything isn’t slow and young like it was between them the first time around. He’d thought, back then, that he knew what hurt was, but he’d only just tasted its edges. 

Arthur rolls away from Eames, and Eames’ hand disappears like he’s been burnt, which wasn’t Arthur’s intention at all. Arthur sits up and turns towards Eames, cross-legged and leaning on his elbows with slight exhaustion curving his frame. His bullet grazes have all been carefully bandaged, but they ache with a certain bracing steadiness.

“Apologies, Arthur,” Eames says, voice ice cold. “I shouldn’t have taken…the liberty.”

Arthur remembers that there was a time when Eames touched him like they were part of each other and slinging an arm around Arthur was the kind of thing that _couldn’t_ be refused.

“No, Eames,” Arthur starts. Eames turns his head away and moves to stand, but Arthur catches his wrist. “Hey….”

“I’m sorry; like I said, I shouldn’t have woken you.”

“I’m not trying to tell you to stop touch—to stop. I don’t want us to think everything will just fall into place, is all. We live in a careful world now.”

“It doesn’t need to be easy. I just…when I saw you in the warehouse I was so angry that I didn’t understand how you’d come to be there. I should have already known you were in the business. What happened to us?”

“ _You_ left me.”

“I was on the run from Blackwell Industries.” Eames says, defensively, “Contacting anyone would have ended in their deaths as an example to me. After it was safe, I wrote to you again and again, but you never replied.”

Arthur looks away guiltily, remembering getting blind drunk one night just to have to courage to block Eames’ address. Then he’d dropped into the criminal world and any numbers or addresses connected with his old life had been erased.

“I’m not blaming you, Arthur. I’m just trying to tell you that just because it was over once doesn’t mean it has to be over now.”

Arthur looks up at Eames and thinks he could fall into the kind of comfort Eames always was far too easily. Maybe the real problem is the simplicity of it.

“I’m a Point Man, Eames. I have to be a mystery. You’re a liability to me like nothing else ever could be.”

Eames watches Arthur for a long minute, holding his gaze. Eames brushes one finger up along the thin scar along his hairline from his fight with his father like he’s learning the shape of it. Eames’ is smile is new, one Arthur doesn’t recognise, but he can see that there is something beautiful in newness.

“Arthur, everyone needs a weakness,” Eames says, leaning forward to speak softly into the curve of Arthur’s neck just under his ear. “I promise you’ll never find a better one than me.”

Eames kisses Arthur fiercely, then. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine he’s lying in wet grass, the low thrum of too-loud music and jumbled voices forming background noise. They kiss like they know each other (and they do), tilting their lips together in that same, practiced way, Eames’ hands fumbling under Arthur’s t-shirt, working gingerly around the bandages, but pressing bruises everywhere else. They fuck like they love each other, long: gentle movements, harsh only in desperation, Eames’ hands framing Arthur’s hips between his thumbs.

And if they kiss like they know each other and fuck like they love each other, who is to say they don’t?

They lay for a long time after, not sleeping, just breathing together in the cramped double bed, re-learning the rhythm and the sound of two sets of lungs and two heart beats falling into synchronism.

\---

The two weeks in the safe-house pass slowly. They tell stories, stare at the ceiling. Eames sketches lazily on the walls in pencil. There is not much to do besides talk and have sex, even if they had wanted to do anything besides that.

Eames drives them to the airport in an awful Citroen hatchback that is at least fifteen years old. Arthur’s blood from the drive _to_ the safe-house has dried into a coffee-and-strawberries coloured crust all over the passenger seat. It makes everything smell like iron. Arthur stretches out in the backseat instead, dozing in and out. The radio station they are listening to seems to be Croatian. Eames laughs occasionally at what’s being said; Arthur realises he must speak the language.

Sometimes it seems like there is too much between them. Sometimes that’s okay. 

It’s like when Arthur was making the bed so they could eat breakfast sitting on it without getting crumbs in the sheets, and Eames had been smoking with his head stuck out the window. He’d walked up behind Arthur and put his hands around Arthur waist in that almost silent way of his and purely instinctually, Arthur had flipped around and floored Eames in one smooth, instantaneous motion, knocking all the breath out of Eames’ lungs. There are just some things they have to do differently now.

In the airport, they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, staring up at the departures board.

“Where shall we go?” Eames says.

“Let’s play a game,” Arthur replies. 

“Yes,” Eames agrees.

“It’s works like this.” Arthur continues. His voice is low and smooth, just for Eames. “I’m going to get on a plane. You have to guess where I’ve gone and follow me. If you guess wrong, you don’t know me anymore. If you guess right…then….” Arthur steps closed to Eames so that his next words are soft against Eames’ neck. “You win,” he whispers.

Eames swallows, and Arthur can feel the shift of his throat underneath his lips, he’s so close to Eames’ skin. “Okay,” Eames says.

Arthur grins at him as he disappears into the crowd. Eames waits for an hour. Then he follows Arthur home.

\---

Alice Ford went to Illinois State University to become a teacher and lived in Chicago for two years after she graduated. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like the tall buildings or the fast people and all she wanted to do the whole time was come home – so she did. Her husband (they’d married just out of college) came with her and they bought the Eames’ house when they moved out of town because there was a sense of family worn into all walls and floors.

Alice had been a close friend of Eames’ at school and she remembers sitting in the middle of the floor in the room she knew to be his, staring up at the intricate pencil sketches covering the walls. She’d photographed them all carefully before painting them over. She remembers tracing the faces in the drawings. Arthur’s appeared most frequently. 

Alice Ford wasn’t the only person in town who sometimes stumbled across some bit of evidence of the lives of Arthur and Eames and stood for a moment, marvelling, as if they had found a mark of magic. Arthur and Eames had always been like that in school; mysterious, surprising, and beyond the cramped borders of their small town.

It’s that startling quality that makes Alice drop the potted plant she’s carrying onto the front porch in shock, bringing her hands up to cover her mouth in case a shriek slips out. Arthur is sitting on the curb in front of her house. 

He’s leaning against the mailbox post and his head is tipped back tiredly. His legs seemed impossibly long, stretched out into the street. He’s wearing a fine pale grey suit with a waistcoat but no tie. A leather briefcase sits next to him and Alice can tell from the way he is resting his fingers on the strap that he’s paying attention to the bag and his surroundings despite looking otherwise like he might be asleep.

Seeing Arthur sitting on the sidewalk in front of her house is about as surprising as finding a parrot in the apple tree in the back garden. Not impossible, but still fundamentally extraordinary.

“ _Arthur?_ ” she asks. It’s the first she’s seen of him in eight years, but she heard his voice the last night he was ever into town, crushed grey words barely rising above speaking level as he told his father he would never come back and slammed the screen door behind him. She remembers washing dishes and wanting to go out the front door and find him, but she was too afraid.

Arthur sits up with easy grace, twisting around to face her. “Alice,” he says, at ease in that sharp suit and slim smile. “I’m sorry. I hope I’m not disturbing you; I’m only just for someone.”

“Well, uh, hi?” Alice says, still unable to fully make sense of the situation. It’s _Arthur_ standing there. She remembers his photograph in the local newspaper, stiff in his military uniform, a decorated hero. The newspaper didn’t run the story about his temporary disappearance and dishonourable discharge a year later, but Alice had heard about it anyway.

“Eames used to live here, you know.”

“We bought the house from his parents. They’ve moved to—”

“To Brighton. I know.”

“Oh,” Alice looks down at the plant soil and shards of terracotta spread across the steps. “Why are you in town?”

“Sorry, I thought I said. I’m waiting for someone.”

Alice laughs a little. “No, you did say, only I thought…well, never mind. Would you like to come in for some coffee or something while you wait?”

“Sure. Let me just get my bag.” Arthur stands, following her up the steps. He trails his hand along the railing like a little boy and she wonders if he’s remembering coming up these same steps as a child. “I hope I’m not intruding,” Arthur says once they’re inside. He’s taller than she remembers, filling up all the spare space in the dining room with the self-assurance settled just under the surface of his skin, making his motions clean and efficient. 

“Where do you live now?” Alice says from the kitchen, kicking a few lego buildings out of her way.

“Paris, sometimes. I travel a lot for work.”

“Oh, France. I love trying to cook French food. I’m sure I’m not very good but…I do my best. What do you do?”

“Don’t be modest, Alice. Didn’t they say you were the best in home ec? And, I’m in espionage.”

Alice only just manages to swallow the mouthful of coffee she’d just taken. “I’m sorry,” she manages. “Did you say _espionage_? Aren’t you supposed to lie about that sort of thing? Shouldn’t you be telling me you’re an insurance salesman or something?”

Arthur takes his cup of coffee gently, setting it on the table in front of him after taking a sip and making an appreciative noise. He looks up at her from under his dark eyebrows and his grin is an almost invisible twist of his mouth. “That is the lie.”

“Right,” Alice says, falteringly.

“My father still lives next door…do you see him very often?” Arthur asks after a moment of silence. His voice is carefully blank.

“Well, he doesn’t get out much. Just to the grocery store.”

“Is he well?”

“Lonely.”

His mouth twists sourly. “It’s good he got what he worked so hard for.”

She pauses, looking down uncomfortably. She hates awkward silences but mentioning the weather seems like it would only do more harm. Instead, she says: “Whom are you…umm…waiting for?”

“Eames,” Arthur says, simply. The expression on his face is now unfathomable, caught in between worry and longing and something like annoyance.

“It doesn’t surprise me that you’re still friends.” Alice says, almost absently, remembering how jealous she was at the way they were with each other, that easiness that made her feel lonely and wanting. Anyone was a little jealous and lonely watching them. It was a feeling that no one would ever connect with her so well as they connected with each. 

“Yes, well, we’ve only recently been back in touch.”

“Are you two—?” She only realises the inappropriateness of her question when she’s already two words in. She wants to ask him if they’re _back together_. But, of course, it had only even been her own speculation back when she knew them in high school, and she barely knows either of them well enough to ask a personal question like that now.

“Are we…?” Arthur prompts.

“Are you both going to be staying in town long?” 

“Only a day or so, probably. It’s a sort of nostalgia trip. If Eames ever finds his way here, anyway.”

“Where is he coming in from?” 

Arthur takes another sip of coffee and then spills a little out of the side of the cup. The way it exactly misses spilling on his suit at all makes Alice think perhaps he planned it, but then they’re both busy cleaning up the mess and Arthur never answers due to the distraction.

They speak for another hour, mostly Alice talking about her kids and her job at the elementary school. At four-thirty someone knocks on the front door.

“It’s a little early for Elise to be dropping the kids off from their play-date,” Alice says, worried.

“It’s Eames,” Arthur says, like it’s not a guess, like he _knows_. “That’s the way he knocks,” Arthur explains when she looks at him quizzically. “I’ve trespassed on your company long enough, Alice. Thanks for the coffee.”

“Eames is welcome to come in, as well,” Alice says genuinely. Arthur gets to his feet anyway. Anyone else would seem indecisive, but Arthur’s deliberation seems purposeful.

She goes to answer the door when the knock sounds a second time; Arthur’s right. It’s Eames.

“Alice!” he says, sweeping her into a one-armed hug. “It’s brilliant to see you.”

He looks tired and a little distracted, as if he is trying to peer around her into the house. He smells like airplanes, re-circulated air and peanuts. Everything else about him is expansive and bright; his suit is well-worn, but there is a lazy, expensive angle to the cut. He grins crooked-white. His accent is more English than she remembers from school. 

“Is Arthur in, perhaps?” he asks, before she can answer his first question.

“Umm…Eames!” she stutters out, surprised, for some reason, that he is actually here. “It’s nice to see you, too. Arthur is…in the living room.”

“Thanks,” he says. He glides past her easily and thrusts a bouquet of flowers into her arms as though he’d been expecting to call on her all along. She sets them on the kitchen table before following Eames back into the living room.

“They’re beautiful, Eames,” she says. Arthur is perched on the arm on the sofa. His eyes go soft as Eames enters the room.

“You’re late,” he says, deadpan. 

“I had a layover in O’Hare.”

“You should have flown to St Louis International. My flight was direct.”

“There wasn’t another until tomorrow.” Eames is smiling sheepishly, like flight scheduling errors are his fault.

“Did you drive all the way down from Springfield, then?”

“Arthur…” Eames’ voice dies in his throat. The deliberately wry quality of their back-and-quips is absent in the hesitancy with which Eames says Arthur’s name. He says Arthur’s name like he’s been dreaming of saying it, like the word tastes beautiful in his mouth. “I win, don’t I?”

“I suppose,” Arthur concedes. 

Eames crosses the distance between them in three strides, and he pulls Arthur to his feet in a swift motion. Then he is tipping Arthur backwards and kissing him, dipping him back like they’re in an old film, black and white and clouded with steam in a train station, written in scripts for each other and no one else.

“I missed you,” Arthur murmurs when they part. Alice stands at the door, feeling like an intruder and yet unable to wrench herself away.

“It’s not that long a flight,” Eames says, wryly.

“Not the flight, you idiot. I’m trying to say something nice. _I missed you_.”

“I missed you, too.”

Arthur leans his forehead into Eames’ collarbone, letting Eames’ arms come up around him, and Alice can see Eames fingers sliding and settling along the line of Arthur’s spine like he’s forgotten the feel of it and is desperate to re-learn. “I know,” Arthur says softly. Eames pulls Arthur against him tightly, saying with the curve of his wrists and the familiar way his chin settles against Arthur’s temple that _knowing_ is only a piece of what they offer each other.

\---

EPILOGUE

It’s late afternoon and the light is making the dust motes in the warehouse glow where it falls through the dirty windows.

Eames is half-asleep over his desk, very purposefully ignoring a stack of reports Arthur insisted he read when Ariadne comes up to him and perches on top of a pile of architecture textbooks she’s taken to leaving in the warehouse to study for finals when she has a free moment. 

This is the third job they’ve pulled since Inception; Cobb’s second, since he’d taken the one after Fischer off to be with his kids. They’re still based out of Paris, and the bill Cobb must be running up for airfare in and out of LA is probably extensive. Luckily, Saito’s been footing it without comment. As soon as Ariadne has graduated they’ll probably go back to the states as a team. Eames is trying to convince Yusuf to come along as well, but he’s still undecided about the idea of the permanent group that they’re setting up.

“I think Cobb is jealous of you and Arthur,” she says, firmly, like she’s expecting him to deny it. 

Eames cracks a sly grin. “He always has been. Has anyone ever told you that you’re very direct? You could maybe benefit from a little more conversational sprinkles and frosting.”

“Sprinkles and frosting are your job, Eames,” she says grinning. “I’m curious by nature.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I thought you were just obnoxious.” Eames laughs. Ariadne swats his arm and Eames groans and winces as if she’s really hurt him. 

“Will the two of you shut up? Some people are actually working around here,” Arthur calls from across the room, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as he does whenever he’s got a low-grade headache.

“I just noticed that Cobb always looks a bit annoyed when you mention jobs you’ve pulled together without him.”

“Well, Cobb put a lot of his faith in Arthur after Mal; he had to. I suppose it’s difficult when you put all your trust in one person and they’ve already got someone else they trust that much.”

“What are you saying?” Ariadne asks quizzically. She tips her head to the side like a bird.

Eames holds up a finger as if to say _watch this_. He calls across the room, “Arthur, love, do you remember what flavour my fourteenth birthday cake was?”

“White chocolate and macadamia nut,” Arthur replies, without looking up. “I can’t believe you forgot that cake, Eames.” He sets his pen down and kicks back in his chair, humming at the memory. “Your mother bribed me to spend a week watching everything you ate to figure out what you’d like best and she had it shipped in overnight from the bakery in Harrods. That cake was so fucking delicious I nearly had a crisis of faith.”

Eames laughs. “Do you remember the name of my first and only pet?”

Arthur makes a face, “Tybalt the cat. You gave him to the mechanic in exchange for a new transmission after you drag-raced Toby Pierce across town with me screaming in the backseat. My first ever near-death experience.”

“What was my first tattoo, Arthur?” Eames doesn’t try to stop his voice from softening. Ariadne is looking between the two of them like her world-view has shifted a hundred and eighty degrees. She’s dangerously close to dropping her jaw.

“Eames…” Arthur says, finally staring over at them. “You shouldn’t show off. It’s unbecoming of you.”

Eames shakes his head, tilting his head back as if to say _please, just this once_. Arthur closes his eyes and Eames thinks, _he’s remembering what it looks like; dark against my skin, what it feels like under his fingertips_. “A.” Arthur says, quietly. “A for Arthur. A for first kisses. Why are you asking, Eames?”

Eames splays his fingers on the desk. He wishes they were on Arthur’s skin. “Ariadne wanted to know if you trust me, Arthur. But that’s not the right way to think about the question, is it? We both know the real answer is that that we taught each other what trust means.”

**Author's Note:**

> because I know you wanted some more notes:
> 
> 1\. Apologies to anyone from southern Illinois who I may have offended in some way. I tried to keep it all pretty general, but I’m sure you can still tell I’ve never even been to southern Illinois let alone lived in a small town there.
> 
> 2\. WHAT WAS THAT EVEN, I DON’T KNOW. I actually wrote a plan for this at the beginning. The end result was not closely related. So…yeah. I realize that there is not a shortage of A+E being young together, but I hope this seemed different in some way, because I did try for that.
> 
> 3\. Title from ‘Lippy Kids’ by Elbow.


End file.
